


Windows and Opportunities

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adult Content, Alternate Universe, Episode Related, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-04
Updated: 2007-11-04
Packaged: 2019-02-02 16:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12730101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: SG1 is sent back in time thirty years. Again. But this time, their minds return to childhood bodies. How will they return to their own time, aside from reliving it? Window of Opportunity AU





	Windows and Opportunities

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

Chapter 1

Colonel Jack O’Neill stared at the planet’s sun through a filter, remarking upon its flares with a bit of concern. Ever since his team’s short visit back to 1969, sun flares made him nervous, not to mention the fact that this particular sun was already leaning towards dangerous in its bright intensity.

“Is this supposed to be doing that?” he asked as Major Samantha Carter looked over her instruments.

“It’s a corona mass emission, like a giant solar flare,” she explained, as if Jack would understand what that meant. Jack looked through the filter then back towards Sam.

“But it’s safe, right?” he asked.

“Judging from the planet’s magnetic field, it might cause a significant increase in the surface radiation,” she answered, not exactly the answer Jack was looking for.

“But it’s safe, right?” he asked again, hoping this time he’d get a more reassuring response.

“As long as we don’t stay here too long, yes, sir,” Sam answered.

“Anybody explain that to Daniel?” Jack asked, looking towards where Dr Daniel Jackson was talking animatedly with another scientist. Sam glanced up from her work.

“Perhaps you should go and make sure, sir,” she suggested hopefully, and Jack turned to look at her suspiciously. She was bent innocently over her readings, turned away from him and any further questions he might have.

“I think I’ll go do that,” he finally said towards her back. Leaving Sam with Teal’c, he walked over to where Daniel and the other scientist were talking.

Daniel seemed to be in his element, looking over some sort of pedestal with a single minded intensity, but even from a distance Jack could sense something was off. The other scientist seemed agitated, looking over the array of stones and then at the sky. Jack altered his approach so that he could make his arrival unnoticed. Coming up behind a column, he heard the scientist say, “The geomagnetic disturbance is reaching its peak. I have to act now.” Now more alarmed than ever, Jack hurried around the column, just as he heard a very stunned Daniel saying, “I don’t understand.” The other scientist was holding some sort of weapon on him while Daniel stood, frozen. Moving fast, Jack dove onto Daniel knocking him to the ground just as the weapon fired.

Rolling, Jack raised himself to his knees, using the pedestal for cover as he raised his own weapon towards the scientist. Daniel stirred next to him on the ground, but Jack sensed the movement and pushed him down with his free hand, never once taking his eyes off the scientist with the weapon.

“Carter, Teal’c!” Jack shouted, drawing their attention to the situation.

“I do not have time!” the scientist exclaimed, agitated, and with a sudden move he began to push stones on the altar. The machine started to power up, causing Jack to lean away from it cautiously.

“Hey,” he barked, his weapon still trained on the scientist, “What are you doing?” Behind him, he heard the Stargate activating. 

“Jack?” Daniel said suddenly, sounding dazed, and Jack wondered belatedly if Daniel had been hurt when he knocked him over. Whether he was or not, Jack didn't have time to check, still keeping his eyes on the scientist. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and knew Teal'c and Sam had arrived.

“Hey,” he called again, keeping the other man's attention on him. The scientist had dropped his weapon in his need to finish whatever it was he was doing to the pedestal and, as agitated as he was, he didn't seem at all concerned that Jack still had his own weapon pointed straight at him. Finally, the rest of Jack's team made their move.

“You will cease what you are doing,” Teal’c said, coming upon the scientist suddenly from behind with Sam at his side, her own weapon raised.

“No!” he shouted, trying to escape, only to be knocked forward over the pedestal, hitting more of the stones. The sound coming from the machine shifted slightly, and his eyes opened wide, but at that moment everyone was engulfed in a white light. 

Chapter 2

The light filled Jack for a brief moment, and then he was standing in front of his bed, holding a shirt. He stared at the shirt and then at the bag lying on the bed. Then he looked around his room, just like the room he had when he was a kid still living with his parents, perfect down to the model jets and the posters on the walls. Apparently he was either in the middle of packing or unpacking, judging by the bag and the shirt in his hands. He finally dropped the shirt, and cautiously he walked over to his mirror. The face that looked back at him was not one he had seen for at least twenty-five years. 

“Crap!” he said, his hand moving to his no longer gray hair, gliding over his smooth face and finally pinching his ear, hard. The pain was very real too, but he did not wake up. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty years old, if he was even that. He looked around his room again, taking in details he had forgotten over the years, finally resting his eyes on a calendar featuring hockey. According to the page open it was sometime in the month of April, 1974.

The door opened, and Jack spun around to find himself face to face a woman both familiar and strangely foreign. She was much younger than the last time Jack had seen her, but already age had made itself known upon her face and Jack knew for a fact that her hair was dyed red.

“Mom,” he said, his voice squeaking slightly.

“Are you all packed?” she asked, smiling that sad sort of smile she always got when Jack had to leave home, “Don’t want to miss your bus!”

“Almost,” Jack answered, trying to get his voice to sound something approaching normal.

“Well, just come on down when you’re finished. I’ve been making you a snack for the trip,” she said, and after Jack attempted an appreciative grin she turned and left him alone. Jack sat down on his bed. He knew that this wasn’t real. It had to be some sort of mind trip, like with the gamekeeper. Or maybe that machine or the solar flares or whatever caused hallucinations, or some sort of weird memory dream thing. He looked at the calendar again. 1974. Wasn’t he still in the academy then? Looking down at his clothes he noticed for the first time that he was in an air force uniform; definitely not his SG1 outfit. 

Doing a quick calculation in his head, he decided that he must be eighteen years old, almost nineteen. He had been in the academy then, so what was he doing at home? Perhaps it was some sort of vacation, and now he was supposed to go back. Well, Jack had no intention of playing along. Whether this was all in his head or he had somehow managed to go back in time, his first priority was to locate his team. He looked at the bag on his bed, went through it, then started to finish with his packing, but this time he made sure to grab a few extras he wouldn’t have brought to the academy, like his fake driver’s license hidden taped to the underside of his bed. Then he stopped to consider where he should go. 

Teal’c, of course, was a lost cause; he would be with Apophis somewhere out there, perhaps working as his first prime again. Carter would be around ten, but other than that Jack had no idea where she would be. Perhaps he could look up her dad and find her that way. And Daniel would be...crap, he would be around eight years old, right when his parents died. Like the gamekeeper wasn’t bad enough, now here they were again. So, Daniel was probably in New York. Jack frowned, considering. He was fairly certain, given the month and year, that Daniel would be nine in about three months. He knew his parents had died when he was barely eight, so they had to already be dead and Daniel would be in foster care. So that brought up another question; should he head to New York first and try and find Daniel, or should he try and look up Carter’s dad and find out her address? 

Jack hesitated between the two, but thinking about Daniel’s childhood had already awakened darker thoughts. Daniel had never said it outright, but Jack had gotten the impression that some of the families he had stayed with over the years hadn’t exactly been nourishing, and Jack shuddered to think of Daniel suddenly returned to that kind of life. He made up his mind. He would find out where Carter was and phone her, but he would travel to New York. Decision made, he grabbed his bag and went downstairs to face his mother.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Samantha Carter found herself very suddenly upside down and only years of training led her into a controlled roll rather than a hard fall as she brought herself back to the ground and to a more upright position.

“Ha! I knew you couldn’t do it! No way you could do a hand stand for a whole minute!” Sam turned her head and found herself staring at a boy just on the verge of adolescents with a toothy grin. Sam had the sudden urge to stick her tongue out at him, only stopping because her brain caught up with her at that moment and made her wonder what she had been doing standing on her hands in someone’s backyard with a boy who, oddly enough, looked exactly like Mark used to when he was around twelve or so. It was only when she stood up, however, and discovered that she was in fact shorter than the boy that she really began to panic.

“I shrunk!” she exclaimed, startled, and the boy stared at her as though she had grown a second head.

“You stunk, you mean!” he said after that moment of hesitancy, and the grin returned. But Sam had stop listening. She had heard her voice, much higher than she was used to, and now she had taken the time to look down at herself. Even more noticeable than her size, her entire body seem to have changed drastically. She ran her hand cautiously over her now flat chest, and was startled when she noticed for the first time how long her hair was as it fell into her face. Finally, she had to accept that she was a kid. And if she was really a kid, then that mean that the boy who looked so much like her brother used to, he must in fact, really be…

“Mark!” A person called out from a screen door, her tone scolding, and Sam turned her eyes slowly upwards to see a face she had not seen, outside of photos, for over twenty years.

“Mom?” she whispered, feeling tears fill her eyes at the shock. 

“Sammy?” the woman asked, concerned, “Are you hurt?”

“You…you’re…” Sam began, wanting to explain that she was dead, but she couldn’t say it. Then Sam rushed forwards and wrapped her arms around her mother, feeling her mother respond and return the hug. She would allow herself just this one moment before she started to analyze and solve what had happened.

“Please don’t be the gamekeeper again,” Sam murmured into her mother’s dress. But the timing was wrong; Sam had been older when she died, and besides the gamekeeper’s technology hadn’t worked so well on her. When her mother finally started to pull back, though not so much away as to be able to see Sam’s face, Sam tried to blink away her tears and accept that this couldn’t be real. 

“What’s the matter, Sammy?” her mom asked, concerned by her tears, “Did Mark do something?”

“I didn’t do nothing!” Mark shouted, indignantly, “She’s just a baby!”

“I am not!” Sam cried, without thinking, and then blinked. She didn’t talk like that. She didn’t respond to a twelve-year-old’s taunts, even if that twelve-year-old was her brother. Her mother considered them, a slight frown on her face.

“This isn’t about your father, is it?” she asked, still concerned, “He’ll be home soon, safe and sound.”

“I’m ok,” Sam answered, feeling anything but. It was surreal, being comforted by her mother. She felt ready to break down, knowing that she couldn’t just accept this. She had to find out what had happened, and find out where the rest of SG1 had gone. Breaking away from her mother, she ran into the house and into a kitchen. Looking around quickly at the vaguely familiar room, she finally saw what she was looking for, a calendar. April 11, 1974. She continued on, out of the kitchen and instinctively down the hall to her own room. She didn’t really remember that house; they must not have stayed there long, but at the same time it did feel familiar. She walked into a bedroom that seemed a strange mixture of dolls and outer space, pink dresses and toy pistols. 

“Time travel or virtual reality?” she muttered to herself, “Or some sort of memory recall?” It didn’t seem to be like the gamekeeper, even aside from the fact that that hadn’t worked on her. Daniel hadn’t changed his age when he had relived his parent’s death, but she was definitely ten. Then she turned around and saw her mother standing in the door, watching her, still concerned. She blinked her eyes again.

I’ll give it a day, she decided, and then she smiled at her mother, returning to her arms.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Daniel closed his eyes against the blinding light, and then threw them open again as intense pain wracked through his body. His head had already felt jumbled from when Jack knocked him to the ground, but now confusion didn’t even begin to cover it. He was against a wall, and he hurt, and there was a giant looming over him, bellowing angrily. 

“No!” Daniel shouted, his voice sounding strange and high pitched in his ears. He was trapped in his nightmare again, and the giant was coming for him. Seeing the hand swinging towards him, he reacted instantly, using a move Teal’c had insisted he learn. Shocked, he discovered it actually worked, sending the giant tumbling to the ground. That had never happened before. Then he ran, stumbling upon legs that seemed to have trouble holding him up over a foreign house that was much too big. Never having a chance to clear his head, or to figure out what was going on, he accepted that this was probably a dream and decided he would keep running until he escaped from it and woke up. But then he tripped, unable to get his eyes to focus clearly on where he was going, and he fell on his side that was already burning with pain. 

He screamed, curling into himself, and with an angry roar the giant was back, yanking him up from the floor so that he dangled in the air from his arm. The giant was shouting, screaming words at him but his brain had shut down, no longer processing the language. Daniel tried to escape, to force himself to wake up or to at least free himself from the giant’s grasp, but the hand holding him was strong. Then a door was thrown open upon utter darkness. Daniel was dropped to the floor and the door was shut, taking all light with it. 

Daniel scooted back into a corner, hunched in a ball and breathing in harsh, jagged breaths. The darkness was all powerful, as was pain and he closed his eyes against both. He didn’t wonder how he had gotten there, or what had happened, too caught up in an old nightmare that had suddenly become real. It was hours before he came back to himself, opening his eyes upon darkness. 

Chapter 3

When Teal’c was enclosed by the light, there was a momentary, tight stretching feeling and then a split second of agonizing pain followed by darkness. It was a long time before he awoke. He was lying by the still active pedestal, and he was completely alone. His teammates, the alien scientist, and all their gear had vanished. In fact, all that remained was what Teal’c had been wearing, which luckily included his GDO.

The first move he made when he was certain that he was alone was to call for his teammates on his radio. When he received nothing but static in return, his next move was to the Stargate. It connected with no trouble, but his concern did not abate. No one was responding to his GDO code. No one seemed to be home. He hesitated, not wanting to step through and hit the iris, but he was also concerned about his missing teammates and he wanted to find help as quickly as possible. While he waited, undecided, the wormhole shut down. 

He decided to wait for an hour, taking that time to search for his teammates himself. There was no trace of them, not even footprints or a single piece of equipment. He considered that the machine had been some sort of transport device, and it had sent his friends away. Or it transported them all to different realities; that could explain why the place looked almost the same but there was no trace of their visit there. In any case, he decided he had waited long enough. He dialed the gate and, after still receiving nothing from the other end, he gave up communication and just stepped through.

He didn’t hit the iris. He also didn’t run into the usual assortment of guns aimed towards the ramp, though at least the ramp seemed unchanged. What he faced was an empty room with minimum lighting, as though everyone had gone home for the night, but even at minimum staff Teal’c had never observed the gate room like this. Looking around suspiciously, everything felt familiar but wrong. There had never been any danger of hitting the iris; there didn’t seem to be an iris installed to the gate. And the gate room was filled with items he had never noted to be there before, such as a table filled with computers and notes, and scaffolding lying in a crumpled wreck near the gate. Teal’c suspected that before he came it had been standing against the gate, but the opening of the event horizon had taken care of that. Despite these very obvious signs of people, however, the place seemed deserted.

“Colonel O’Neill,” Teal’c said, trying his radio one last time on the off chance SG1 had returned to this place, assuming it was their own reality, which Teal’c was beginning to doubt. There was still no response. 

Teal’c stood in the gate room for a few minutes, suddenly at a complete loss as to where to go or what to do. He had neither Samantha Carter’s knowledge of machines nor Daniel Jackson’s grasp of the Ancient’s language, and if it was that pedestal that had sent him wherever he was, he hadn’t a clue how to make it return him and his teammates to their own reality. And if this was their reality, then where had his teammates gone, and why was everything so obviously different when he remained unchanged? Finally deciding that there was no point in returning to the planet and not wishing to stand around until he might be caught, at least not before he had more information, he finally decided to go to the surface. 

He met no one on his way, but the halls were eerily familiar. He considered searching the base, perhaps visiting the locker rooms and trying to find some regular clothing, but the strange familiarity of the place was making him nervous. He wanted information, and if he was caught on base than it would be nearly impossible for him to escape if he decided escape was necessary. Knowing nothing of his situation or the situation his teammates might be in, he opted to leave quickly. His knowledge of the facility aided him greatly, but even so it seemed absurdly easy. 

There were people up at ground level, but they seemed more concerned with making sure no unauthorized people got in than making sure no one got out, and he had little trouble slipping past them unseen. It helped that it was dark out; apparently he had gated back in the middle of the night. All the same, as he walked down the road away from the facility, he was still passed by a few cars. Those were his first clue in to what was going on. 

They were all older models than what he normally saw driving down those roads, and out of one he heard loud music playing as several youths sang along. Between the music and the cars, he found another strange and uneasy familiarity. For the first time, he began to wonder if the device on P4X-639 hadn’t sent him to a different reality, but to a different time.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Jack told himself for the hundredth time that he wasn’t in any way betraying his parents’ trust. All right, so he wasn’t returning to the academy like he was supposed to. But he wasn’t really eighteen, this, whatever this was, wasn’t real, and as soon as he fixed it then maybe it would be like none of this had happened anyway. His priority was to find his kids, who were quite literally kids at this point, and if he had to use the money his mom meant for him to use in an emergency to do it, he would. 

All the same, it had been much harder than he had thought it would be, just to get on the bus and wave goodbye to his mom. His dad wasn’t there; Jack had forgotten why at this point but he knew it would be strange to ask something he definitely should know, so he didn’t. So he hugged his mom goodbye and got on the bus. Even without feeling like he was somehow lying to her, he felt strangely reluctant to leave. It was nice visiting home again back when he still had his own room and seeing his mom looking so young and energetic. Deciding he’d make it up to her by visiting sometime in his proper time, he shook it off. 

He waited until the bus's first stop, and then he left it to hitch a ride going in practically the opposite direction, intending to make his way to New York. Once he changed out of his uniform that marked him as military, it wasn’t too hard to find a group of kids around his own apparent age to ride with. That was a strange experience in itself; they all saw him as one of them, a teenager of all things, when inside he felt like he was closer to fifty. Between the weirdness of being an adult in a teenager’s body, the vague guilt that he wasn’t on his way to the academy like his mom thought, and the urgent need to find out what had happened and even more importantly to find his teammates, Jack felt regrettably too turmoiled to really enjoy the trip back in time like he normally would. He spent the night with the kids and then went off on his own for a bit, trying to find an address, or even better a phone number, for Daniel or Sam.

“Look,” Jack said, after arguing with a woman on the phone for nearly an hour, “You can ask Daniel if you want to, just tell him a Jack O’Neill called, and he’ll tell you he knows me. It’s not like I’m some pedophile stalker here!” At which point the woman hanged up. So much for getting an address for Daniel; though at least the woman had indirectly confirmed that there was a Daniel Jackson in foster care in New York City. If he could get there, he could probably do some more concrete digging into records and find him. In the meantime, he began his search for Sam. This was both more difficult and less difficult. It was more difficult because he didn’t even know what state she would be in, let alone what city was most likely. But it was less difficult because he had her parents’ names to go by, and if they were in the phone book he would find them. It took him making calls through eight different states and around twenty dollars worth of change on calls to the wrong Carters, before he was finally answered by a woman.

“I’d like to speak to Samantha Carter,” Jack said, his voice still polite but tired. He waited for the inevitable answer that no one by that name lived there, when the woman said, “Just a moment,” and then away from the phone he heard her calling, “Sam, you have a phone call. I think it’s one of your friends from school!” A few seconds later, there was a very young, hesitant voice at the other end saying, “Yes?”

“Carter?” Jack asked, blinking dumbly to have actually gotten through. The girl was silent for a moment and Jack was afraid it was the wrong number after all, except even if it was he would expect the kid to say something. 

“Who is this?” she said at last.

“Jack O’Neill,” Jack answered, suddenly hyper aware of how young and different his own voice sounded. And what if this was the right Samantha, but she didn’t remember him? What if he was the only one who remembered the future? But all of his doubts were cast aside with Sam’s next words.

“Colonel? Oh thank God,” she said, “It isn’t just me.”

“Not just you,” Jack agreed, feeling greatly relieved that it wasn’t just him, “Though I’d love to know what ‘it’ is.”

“I have a few theories,” Sam answered, “But at the moment I’m not certain of anything.” 

“All I know is that one second I was on PX-whatever fighting with Mickey, and the next second I was back home. Way back home.” Sam was silent again, this time while she tried to work out what Jack had just said.

“Malikai,” she finally said, working out the ‘Mickey’ reference, “That was the scientist Daniel was so excited to meet with. Have you managed to contact Daniel, sir?”

“Not yet,” Jack answered, “But I’m on my way to find him. I’m headed to New York.”

“He would be eight, wouldn’t he, sir?” Sam asked, frowning with concern.

“Yeah, I know,” Jack answered, and then, “You’re in Colorado, right? How weird is that? I should have kept going to the Academy; I could have met up with you first.”

“No, no, I think you should try to find Daniel,” she answered, “I’m kind of busy here anyway. I have some ideas that might help us. And…and I think…Daniel never said, but I really think the best thing is for you to find him.”

“Right,” Jack answered. He didn’t like the situation at all; his team was too spread out, Teal’c probably not even on the same planet, and he had no idea how to fix it except to continue trying what he was doing. He talked to Sam another thirty minutes but they finally settled on a plan which was basically what they were already doing. Jack would go to New York and find Daniel, Sam would explore her theories and Jack would call each day to keep them connected. Jack finally hung up the phone feeling greatly relieved. He had found one of his teammates, she was ok, and he wasn’t the only one stuck in the wrong time. Now if only he could find Daniel in just as good of shape, everything would be going good. Somehow, he doubted they would be so lucky. 

Chapter 4

It had taken Daniel some time, but he had finally begun to connect the text he had been translating around the pedestal with where he was now. But understanding what had happened, at least as much as he could without having Samantha Carter’s degrees, and knowing what to do about it were two different things. It had been bad enough living through this nightmare the first time; he really didn’t want to do it again. He thought for sure that with his more mature, older outlook, even if through a child’s eyes, he should find a way out of this. Unfortunately, he was already discovering it didn’t work that way.

His mind may have been old, but his body was much younger than he was used to. Even taking aside adjusting to being so much smaller, he found that the way his mind worked didn’t seem to be the same. Even as his world was now huge, everything inside him seemed so much bigger too. His emotions overwhelmed him. When the giant came, threatening pain and darkness, everything left of his older mind fled leaving him paralyzed in his fear, a shaking, sobbing, screaming little boy. Intellectually he knew it wasn’t a giant; Daniel was just small. And when he was left alone, locked in a closet or in his room, the sense of being completely and utterly alone would overwhelm him, drowning him in his sorrows. 

Conversely, when he did find fleeting moments of happiness, he found those moments equally as strong. And he did find happiness; his young mind was easier to distract and that coupled with his quick intellect would provide him with an outlet for laughter. But he didn’t laugh out loud; that was one lesson he retained, the ability to be completely silent and hold everything inside, at least until provoked by pain. Then nothing he did could hold back tears, and though at the time he didn’t care, only wanting escape, afterwards he felt absurdly embarrassed, his older mind taking back over and finding his inability to stop crying repulsive.

The first time around, when he really was eight years old, newly orphaned and still unfamiliar with America, he didn’t have a clue what to do after he was sent to this large and frightening man’s home. He had been too terrified to tell anyone, not knowing who to tell anyway, or even if anyone would care if he did. Now he had been there for one day, and he already felt the same, tight, trapped feeling that got into his chest and made it difficult to breathe. He was helpless again, and he hated it. 

But this time around, he wasn’t really eight years old. He had already proved that, using Teal’c’s move to send the giant to the floor. That had never happened the first time. At least he felt fairly confident it hadn’t; to be honest most of what he remembered from the first time were from his nightmares and a sense of incredible pain and fear, not very much concrete. The longer he stayed there, though, the more true images came back to him, leaving him shaking and gasping for breath. But the point was that he wasn’t really a child, even if he felt like one or looked like one. And, using his older, more knowledgeable mind, this time he would escape. 

He closed his eyes, because if his eyes were closed he couldn’t see that he was surrounded by darkness and he couldn’t see how alone he was and, really, he couldn’t see that he couldn’t see. Then he tried to remember what it was like sitting with Teal’c while he explained how to kelno’reem, trying to let go of his fear, and of the pain that coursed through his body and split in jagged waves through his thoughts so that he could think of nothing else. He sat like that for a very long time.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Sam hated and loved being ten again. On the one hand, she hated how big everything was. She hated how she couldn’t reach anything properly. She hated how she wasn’t prepared for her own emotions, how sharply everything seemed to touch her. Even as a real ten year old, she never would have started crying because Mark pulled her hair and called her names. She would have spun around at him swinging, and even if he was bigger she had often gotten the better of him in a fight. But now everything seemed to touch her so sharply, and she would cry, and she cried when her mother came to find out what was the matter just because it was her mother, and then when she laughed she would cry because the laughter was so huge inside her. 

The scientist in her, however, was intrigued by this chance to study childhood with an adult’s perspective. And parts of it were fun. It was amazing how much fun it could be just to swing upside down. She could be silly without getting weird looks; she could wear dresses and like to play war and it worked. Most importantly, she could spend time with her mom, re-remember all those little things that had faded from her memory over the long years. And even if she cried, it often felt cleansing. She was allowed to cry.

What she also loved about being ten, but still with her adult mind, was how easy it was to get away with things. For instance, she was now hiding in the basement surrounded by appliances she had stolen from around the house and taking them all apart and she knew she could get away with it. She knew how to hide what she was doing better now, and even if she was caught the worse thing that might happen was kid stuff. Being confined to her room, loss of allowance, none of that mattered anyway. What did matter was that an ancient looking hairdryer was now outfitted with bits from a metal detector which in turn was redesigned with the help of two watches, pieces from a train set, and a radio antenna. 

She worked on it in pieces, at times completely engrossed in the task but at other times she found it absurdly difficult to concentrate or to keep what she was trying in her head. And she often found herself adding bits that offered nothing whatsoever to what she was building but that made it look cool. Despite all of this, and only having had a day so far in which to work, she had made incredible progress. Even though her young mind often found it harder to concentrate for long stretches, she also found that her thoughts were much clearer and sharper than ever before and she moved forward in her design in leaps and bounds, often working through pure intuition more than a strong scientific understanding.

That night, her thoughts on the machine she was building completely filled her, not unlike the excitement of Christmas or the science fair used to when she was small. She lay in bed while her mother tucked her in and told her a story about an amazing man walking on the moon, and about how far astronauts would one day go. She fell asleep that night with the scent of her mother’s perfume, still feeling her mother’s kiss, and in that sleepy moment just before dreams took her, she knew that everything was perfect.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ 

Jack was having trouble sleeping. He knew that his mother had to know by then that he had never gone back to the academy. He should have called her around the time that his bus would have gotten him there and told her he had made it all right. In fact, he had intended just that, but when it came to it, he felt awkward lying. So he had put it off, opting instead to look up Daniel and Sam, and had forgotten all about it. And he still hadn’t gotten hold of Daniel, though he had tried again, going so far as to suggest he thought the family Daniel was with might be hurting him. The annoying woman on the other end sounded alternatively bored and annoyed, and gave no implication of acting on Jack’s information. At the same time, she refused to give him anything. 

Now he was trying to sleep, having joined another group of kids heading in the right direction. He knew that if his luck held he would be in New York tomorrow, and he hated having to stop for the night but he wasn’t the one driving and he wasn’t about to try and hitch a new ride at night. He had also already gone through a good deal of his money on phone calls and food, and he was starting to worry about what he would do once he finally found Daniel. For that matter, what were they all going to do when they did all finally get back together? He hoped the two scientists would be able to figure it out because he didn’t have a clue.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Many miles away, Teal’c was wondering much the same things, except that he was at the disadvantage of not knowing the fates of any of his teammates, as well as having even less of an idea of what was going on. He had, however, used that day to verify that he was indeed in the past. After discovering the date, he had spent the day walking in single direction, having been strangely drawn there. He had long ago learned to trust his instincts, and his instincts told him to keep going. He only hoped that in the end, it would pay off.

Chapter 5

When the closet opened, Daniel was blinded by the sudden light. It left him helplessly cowering in the farther corner, shrinking away from the man overshadowing the brilliant light while he shielded his eyes. He was given no time to adapt as a large hand grabbed him, dragging him out into the hall. His arm was yanked away from his face and large fingers probed his skin. The man made a grunt of annoyance when he saw the very apparent bruise on his cheek, and again at the flinch when he touched Daniel’s arm. 

“Better call you in sick,” he muttered, releasing Daniel as he headed for the phone. From his disjointed memories, Daniel figured out he was talking about his school. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he actually wanted to go to elementary school. It would be easier to escape from there. Daniel thought hard, forcing himself to let his rational, adult mind handle the situation despite his nauseating fear, and said, “I could say I fell from a tree.” It came out in a whispered squeak, and he couldn’t stop the cringe that followed as he waited for the giant looming over him to react. But the man was already on the phone, speaking with his school, and didn’t seem to have heard him.

“I’m just calling to say that Daniel Jackson won’t be in to school for a while. He’s sick. Yes, yes, don’t worry about it. He’ll bring a note when he gets back. All right. Thank you. Bye.” The phone hung up. “Now I just need a doctor,” the man mumbled to himself, and Daniel felt a strange, trembling sort of fear come over him in a wave. He didn’t know why, but at the mention of a doctor he suddenly found it hard to breathe. He knew he had to leave.

He was in motion before he even became aware, his thoughts still trembling around buried memories. The giant exclaimed behind him with anger. Daniel was fast, but he was having trouble breathing and he could feel himself trembling as though his limbs wanted to fly away from him. He made it to the top of the stairs when he was grabbed from behind.

Daniel didn’t stop to think, he just let Teal’c’s training take him over, just like he had been meditating towards. The next thing he knew there was a series of loud crashes, and when he opened his eyes the giant was lying, unmoving at the bottom of the stairs. Daniel’s arm was sending sharp shoots of pain through his shoulder, the same arm that had been hurt the day before, and somewhere in his brain that was not frozen in shock, he wondered if it was broken. Other questions arose, like, did he just kill someone? Then he was on the ground, clutching at the railing next to the stairs while he threw up. He didn’t want the giant to be dead, but at the same time he did. And that bitter sharp bit of hatred that wanted nothing more than to have the giant cut up into a million pieces made Daniel gag. He didn’t want to hate any more than he wanted to kill. Slowly he stood up and started down the stairs.

“Please don’t be dead,” he whispered with every step, his eyes locked on the still form, “Please don’t be dead.” At the bottom of the stairs he found himself trapped. The large man was sprawled there, blocking his path. Shaking, he brought his small fingers to the fat neck. He almost collapsed from relief when he felt a pulse. Then when he felt the man moving slightly beneath his fingers he jerked back. He had to get out now. He understood this, logically, but he still couldn’t move.

“I’m not eight, I’m not eight, I’m not eight,” he mumbled to himself, trying to make himself move. But it wasn’t until a sudden shadow loomed over him that he could tear his eyes away from the giant’s crumpled form, finding himself looking into the face of another giant. Suddenly, with a small gasp, his scattered, disjointed memories lined up and flew into place, leaving him white and breathless. He remembered the doctor now, and why he scared him. He was the giant’s brother, and he was who wrote all of Daniel’s sick notes and took care of his injuries when the giant’s rough treatment got out of control. He was, in many ways, much more terrifying than the giant. Overpowered by the sudden assault of memories, he made no move to get away when he was grabbed up and lifted away from the stairs.

The giant’s anger always erupted in heat, growling and vicious. When he felt the need to punish Daniel, he usually had enough control to not hurt him in ways that could easily be seen. When he did lose control, though, he lost it majorly, creating the need for excuses to schools and social workers. That is when the doctor came. 

The doctor, unlike his brother, never lost control. His anger was cold and sharp, and when he hurt Daniel it was with cold precision and a morbid grin. Daniel remembered him now and shuddered back from his touch. There didn’t seem to be anything left of his adult self, his mind frozen from all thought but that of escape. 

“What did you do to him?” the doctor asked, his voice devoid of anything but curiosity, but Daniel could sense the freezing anger behind his eyes. When Daniel didn’t answer the doctor shook him, his muscles tense with barely contained violence. Daniel shook and his voice broke, tumbling from him as he tried to explain how it wasn’t his fault, only to be silenced by a second shake.

“In English, Daniel,” the man instructed him, impatiently. Daniel blinked, and for the first time realized he had started speaking in Arabic. He had done that a lot, he remembered, when he really was eight and now he seemed to be slipping right back in to old habits. He didn’t want to slip back into old habits. He didn’t want to cower or cringe or cry, and he didn’t want this man holding him, touching him. He said nothing now, stubbornly silent. He had defeated one nightmare of his past; he could defeat two.

“All right, Daniel,” the doctor said, “I think I can see what happened. You were hurt, screaming for help. My brother, kind hearted soul that he is, was in a hurry to help you when he slipped and fell on the stairs. Is that what happened?” Daniel stared. 

“Oh but wait, you don’t look very hurt,” the doctor continued, “Let’s see what we can arrange, shall we?” Daniel shuddered beneath his grip.

“He didn’t fall!” Daniel said, defiant, “I pushed him. I did!” The doctor shook his head as though to correct an unruly infant. If he was shocked by Daniel’s admission, he didn’t show it.

“We might know that,” he said, “But who is going to believe a little boy would be able to kill a man. No, we both know you need to be punished, and they won’t do it.”

“He isn’t dead,” Daniel said quickly. The doctor looked thoughtful for a moment, looking around.

“Aha!” the doctor exclaimed, still carrying Daniel with him as he approached a large, heavy bookcase.

“Little boys like to climb,” he explained, “Unfortunately, it wasn’t stable and you were crushed.”

“No,” Daniel whispered, confronted by sudden images of a cover stone swaying. He was finding it difficult to breathe again. It was hard to see past the images of his past, drowning him and stealing his breath away, and he didn’t even begin to struggle until it was too late.

There was an agonizing pain that went through everything, shattering old memories and awakening a scream that came out as a whisper. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t do anything beneath the crushing pain, when he felt a hand touching his face. Blinking his eyes, through a blur of tears, he cringed away. But he knew that face, that hand, even that voice. In that last moment before everything went dark, he saw Jack.

Chapter 6

For once in her life, Samantha Carter was in a hurry to leave the house for school. It helped that she had no intention of actually going to school. She wasn’t even completely sure how to get there, or whether she was supposed to be walking or taking a bus. Not knowing which way she would normally be walking, she hurried off before Mark left and noticed that she wasn’t going in the right direction. She also didn’t want anyone to notice the rather bulky item poking out of the top of her backpack. Kid’s backpacks were, in her opinion, way too small.

Unfortunately, while the part about getting away before anyone noticed her backpack worked, she didn’t escape Mark. 

“Hey, Geek Girl!” he cried, catching up to her, “You’re going the wrong way!”

“Am not,” Sam answered, “It’s an experiment. I’m trying a different way.”

“By going the opposite direction?” he demanded.

“Exactly. I’m proving the world is round,” Sam answered. Mark stared at her for a moment then burst out laughing.

“You’re ditching school!” he exclaimed gleefully, “And here mom and dad think you’re this perfect angel, little baby Sammy.” Sam gave up on hiding what she was doing and took her device out of her backpack. It looked like some odd sort of futuristic ray gun, bulky and exotic.

“Hey, what’s that?” Mark asked, making as to snatch it from her hands. She jerked away from him, surprising him in a sidestep that left him tumbling to the ground.

“It’s an alien detector ray gun,” she answered, and she turned it on. It created a sort of white noise as it warmed up and, cautiously, she aimed it towards herself. It immediately began a high pitched whine.

“See, I’m really an alien,” Sam said, “We’re here to take over the world.” She aimed it towards Mark, and the noise stopped.

“Is that Mom’s hair dryer?” Mark demanded, picking himself up from the ground to get a closer look, “And dad’s metal detector? You are so going to be grounded for life!”

“Shouldn’t you be going to school?” Sam asked, pouting slightly. Irrational or not, she was hoping for a more excited reaction to her new invention, even if he probably did think it was fake. 

“And let my alien sister wander around alone?” Mark asked, “Mom would kill me.” Sam shrugged, and started to point her ray gun in different directions, not really expecting to pick anything up. It was designed to detect other people like her; people who were slightly out of sync in time. She hoped it would help her find Jack and Daniel once she figured out a way to get to New York. To her surprise, it started beeping. It was erratic, whoever it was picking up wasn’t close, but considering the limited range of her detector she hadn’t thought it should be detecting anything at all.

“So what’d you find? Gold?” Mark asked, noting the change in the sound.

“Another alien!” Sam exclaimed, and she began to hurry in the direction the detector was facing, not waiting to see if her brother would follow. He did.

The erratic beeping became more pronounced the further they went. It became difficult in places to follow it; it took them over lawns and ran into houses. Finally, frustrated, Sam tried someone’s door and was pleased to find that it opened.

“Another plus of being a kid,” she mumbled gleefully, “I won’t go to jail for this.” Then she walked into the house. Mark followed her more cautiously, hissing at her to come back, this wasn’t a game. He closed the door behind them and together they walked down someone’s hall, ducking quickly past a doorway where they heard voices, and out the back door. Deciding that if Mark had to follow her he could at least be useful, she got him to give her a boost over the fence in the backyard. They landed in someone else’s yard, also luckily empty, and this time Mark dragged her towards a small fence that led them along the side of the house instead of through it.

“You know how dangerous this is?” he demanded as they walked past the front lawn, “What if they had a dog?”

“I thought of that,” Sam answered, “I installed a taser. It only has like, one charge on it though, I didn’t have enough power for more.” Mark stared at her like she was crazy and they continued walking. The beeping of her gun was more pronounced and constant; she knew they had to be close. Suddenly, someone grabbed them both from behind, and Sam dropped her gun with a squeak. 

“What’re you kids doing sneaking around houses?” a gruff voice demanded, “You brats should be in school, not out vandalizing and stealing or whatever you’re up to.”

“We were going to school,” Mark insisted, indignantly, “You’re making us late.”

“Through my yard?” the voice asked. Squirming slightly, Sam looked up and up into the form of a large, angry looking man.

“We didn’t do nothing!” Mark insisted, “We were just late was all. We were taking a short cut!”

“Ha!” the man cried, shaking them slightly, “I aught to call the police!” 

“You let my sister go!” Mark insisted, “You’re scaring her!” Then he twisted slightly to kick at Sam with his foot. She glared at him, but saw where he was going and burst into dramatic tears.

“What will the police say, you holding onto a little girl like that?” Mark continued, “You let my sister go!”

“I’m not falling for that missy!” the man exclaimed, shaking her slightly. Then he looked away from them, his frown deepening.

“And who are you?” he demanded, “You their leader? Teaching them to steal?” Sam looked up and through her tears she saw a very familiar form.

“Teal’c?” she said in surprise. Teal’c looked equally surprised when he looked at her. Mark didn’t know where to look; this new stranger didn’t look any more friendly than the guy holding him by the arm.

“You will let them go,” Teal’c proclaimed, his voice menacing. The man holding the two children hesitated.

“I’m calling the cops!” he exclaimed at last, dropping them and hurrying back towards his house. Mark made half a move to grab Sam’s arm, wanting to run away while they still could but not about to leave his sister behind.

“Teal’c!” Sam exclaimed excitedly, grabbing up her gun from where it had fallen. Something had come loose inside, but she was able to fix that easily, and a moment later her gun was squealing loudly as she pointed it towards Teal’c.

“You are Samantha Carter?” Teal’c asked, staring at the small girl. 

“How do you know my sister?” Mark demanded, taking a step in front of her defensively.

“He’s the alien we were looking for,” Sam exclaimed, “Only I didn’t know he was here. You weren’t on Earth in 1974!”

“Should you be saying these things, Samantha Carter?” Teal’c asked, apparently taking finding her a child in stride, though Sam knew him well enough to see his surprise.

“Doesn’t matter, he won’t believe us anyway,” Sam explained, “It’s like a game. And if he does, no one will believe him!”

“Do you know what has happened?” Teal’c asked.

“We’ve gone back in time,” Sam answered, “I mean, not just us, it was kind of like a bubble in time that went through the Stargate. Maybe that’s why you’re here; everything outside the bubble is in real time but we’ve looped over ourselves again. Maybe wherever you were thirty years ago is outside the bubble, so it couldn’t send you there, so you went here instead.”

“I awoke upon P4X-639,” Teal’c answered, “I was alone. When I came through the Stargate, I was here.” He had apparently taken Sam at her word that it was all right to speak in front of Mark. Mark didn’t seem to be following their conversation anyway; he was looking back and forth between them with a nervous frown.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re here,” Sam said, “You can drive.” Then she turned and started to lead them down the street, back in the general direction of her house.

“Drive?” Mark demanded, “What are you talking about? You can’t go off with this man!”

“We have to go to New York,” Sam explained, “And find Jack and Daniel. I’d drive myself, but I don’t think I’d get away with it.” Then she paused, finally turning to face her brother. “Well,” she said, “As long as you’re here…how do we get back home?” Mark just stared at her for a long moment, then turned to lead the way. 

Chapter 7

After all the hassle Jack got in arguing with the social worker, he had expected it to be harder to find Daniel's address. In fact, it took very little trouble to break into the office early that morning and then it was only a matter of looking through a filing cabinet until he came across Daniel’s name. The hard part was figuring out how to get there.

Luckily, the cab driver never asked for proof that he could pay, and when they drove up to a large, expensive looking house it was easy enough to say Jack’s ‘uncle’ had the money and he’d be paid in just a second. The cab driver saw the house and was more than happy to wait, expecting a generous tip. It wasn’t a complete lie; if these foster parents turned out nice then they might very well pay the cab fare for Jack. And if they turned out not so nice, well, Jack thought they should pay anyway.

The house was large and well kept; but there was a stately coldness about the walls that gave Jack the creeps. Perhaps it was just the early morning shadows, and perhaps it was just his own fears affecting his perspective, but it didn’t look like a very friendly place for a child to live. Jack shook it off, determined to find out what the situation really was before he started judging people. Perhaps he’d find Daniel was perfectly fine and wondering what took Jack so long to get there. Then, just as he raised his hand to ring the doorbell, he heard the crash. It was followed by the high, painful screams of a child.

```````````````

“Come on, Sam, you really don’t get this school ditching thing!” Mark cried, exasperated with his sister, “Mom’s at home. She’ll see us if we go in! Especially with your new friend!”

“Duh, Teal’c will wait outside,” Sam insisted, “And anyway we can make something up to tell mom. I’ll say there was a bad man who scared me and you took me home like a good big brother.”

“Stop talking like that!” Mark cried, “We are not going to New York.” He stopped walking, his hands on his hips and Sam stopped too, glaring at him defiantly while thinking furiously about what to tell him.

“We are going to New York,” she declared at last, “We have to find Daniel. We think someone is hurting him! He’s our friend, so we have to help him!”

“You don’t know a Daniel!” Mark insisted, “And you don’t know weird black men with funny clothes.” Sam glanced at Teal’c. He was, for the most part, wearing the uniform he had on for their last mission, but the patches had been torn off and he seemed to have found a strip of cloth to tie over his forehead, hiding his gold symbol. 

“Hey, Teal’c,” Sam said, frowning, “Why aren’t you de-aged?” 

“I do not know,” he answered, “When I awoke, I was as you see me now.” Sam frowned a moment longer, then shrugged it off as a puzzle to figure out later. For now they had to go home and figure out how to steal her mom’s car and enough money to get to New York and back again. And for that, they needed to convince Mark to join their cause.

“Daniel is…he’s a pen pal,” Sam said, “I’ve been writing to him. We started it in school; everyone is writing a kid from another school in New York, and Daniel was my kid. His parents are dead and he’s staying with a foster family and I think they’re hurting him and he stopped writing so we need to go and find him, so we need to go to New York.”

“All right,” Mark said, frowning, “And how do you explain him?” He jerked his thumb towards Teal’c, obviously uncomfortable to be in his presence but tolerating him for the moment because he had saved them and because his sister seemed to know him.

“I am also a friend of Daniel’s,” Teal’c answered for himself. Sam’s mind drew a blank for any other explanation to give.

“He really is an alien,” she finally blurted out, “He crashed on Earth, and I met him and we became friends, and, and…show him your symbiote!”

“Are you certain, Samantha Carter?” Teal’c asked, looking concerned.

“Hey, if everything goes like we want it to, he won’t remember this when we fix the time thing,” Sam insisted, “and if it doesn’t then we’ve already changed things drastically and it won’t matter anyway!”

“Huh?” Mark said, unable to follow what they were talking about. 

“He won’t believe you’re an alien otherwise,” Sam said. Teal’c bowed his head slightly, accepting her judgment of the situation. Then he lifted his shirt to show his pouch and a moment later the immature snake was poking its head out.

“Ew, gross!” Mark cried, leaning in for a closer look. Before he could make a move to touch it, it was drawn back in and Teal’c lowered his shirt once more.

“You’re a real alien?” Mark asked, “And you didn’t tell me anything about him?” He said the last statement towards Sam, accusingly. Sam just shrugged, feeling she had come up with enough cover stories for now and she started walking again.

“So now you understand,” she said, “Why we have to steal Mom’s car and go to New York.” Mark had started walking again automatically when she did and she shifted her pace to subtly let him take the lead. Luckily, Mark was still trying to process the fact that his sister knew a real alien and didn’t stop to try and put all of her different stories together, so he didn’t question what Teal’c being an alien had to do with going after her pen pal in New York. They reached the house quickly after that, Mark still apparently stunned into silence.

“You two stay here,” Sam ordered once they were standing near their front lawn, handing her gun for Teal’c to hold, “I’ll go in and get what we need. And leave a note for Mom.” Her voice choked on the last statement. It had suddenly occurred to her that this might, in fact, be the last time she saw her. If their plan worked, they would be returning to the planet and fixing their timeline, and she would be dead again. Swallowing back her sudden tears, she darted for the door before Mark could wake up enough to protest being left outside.

Inside, Mrs. Carter was in the kitchen, just finishing up with the breakfast dishes. She never noticed the front door opening, or the small form of her daughter as she stood half hidden in the hallway, watching her with blurred eyes. Then the phone rang and Sam jumped, suddenly aware of how long she had been standing there, staring at her mother. Her mom answered the phone.

“Hello?” Sam heard and then, “Samantha is in school right now.” Sam could hear the slight frown in her voice; she was obviously wondering why an apparent school friend of Sam’s would be calling during school hours. As her mom made to hang up the phone, Sam made a mad dash for their second phone in the living room, grabbing it up just as her mom set hers down.

“Jack?” Sam hissed as she crouched behind the couch and out of sight.

“Carter?” a voice answered and Sam sighed in relief.

“I’m on the other phone, my mom doesn’t know I’m here,” she explained quickly, and then, “Guess what! I found Teal’c!” There was silence on the other end.

“Teal’c?” Jack asked at last, “How did he get here? We aren’t being invaded by Apophis are we?”

“No, no, he never got sent back like we did, I mean he did because he’s here, but he isn’t any younger, he woke up on that planet we were on before we were sent back, but anyway we told Mark because we needed his help and now we’re going to New York in my mom’s car, did you find Daniel?”

“Whoa, breathe Carter,” Jack answered, then, “Yeah, I found Daniel. It…isn’t good.” Sam felt her excitement in finding Teal’c deflating, hearing the concern in Jack’s tone.

“What happened?” she asked, clutching the phone tightly.

“Well, according to the official report, some burglars broke into the house, knocked his foster father down the stairs, broke the father’s brother’s neck, and…when Daniel tried to escape climbing a bookshelf…it fell. Luckily the guy’s nephew and a valiant cab driver arrived and well, here we are in the hospital.”

“And the unofficial report?” Sam demanded, her teeth clenched.

“Much the same without the burglar. I don’t know how long my cover will last though; someone is bound to realize sometime that I’m not really related to the guy.”

“How is Daniel?” Sam asked. She heard Jack pause and her heart clenched with worry.

“He’ll live,” he answered at last, “He won’t be walking for a while though, I might have trouble getting him all the way to Colorado. Especially if they charge me with kidnapping.”

“Don’t worry, sir, we’ll take my mom’s car,” Sam answered.

“Ah, Carter, don’t get me wrong, but isn’t that stealing? And how do you know Teal’c won’t be charged with kidnapping you?” Sam frowned, understanding that there were some holes in her plan but unable to think of a better way off the top of her head.

“We’ll get disguises,” she decided, “And I don’t know…I’ll figure something out with the car.” Then she heard the water turning off in the kitchen, and footsteps approaching.

“I have to go,” she whispered quickly, “We’ll meet you in New York.” Then she hung up as quietly as possible and huddled low behind the couch. Her mother walked on towards her bedroom. It didn’t take long for Sam to slip into her room to grab some clothes and then, almost as an afterthought, into Mark’s room to grab some for him. She found her mom’s purse on the table and she took everything she thought she might need. Finally, she grabbed the keys. Only then did she hesitate, looking with longing towards the closed bedroom door where her mother had gone. She felt no guilt, but something stronger and sharper that tore at her resolve. Finally, with her vision blurred, she slipped out the door.

Chapter 8

“Carter,” Jack called into the phone, “Carter! Damn it” He heard a dial tone and slowly he hung up the phone. Then he pulled himself up from where he had been crouching behind a receptionist’s desk and slipped casually down the hall. He made his way back to the waiting room at a sedate pace. He hated that room.

He hated that it was a stiff, cold, unfamiliar room without Janet’s reassuring presence and the way all of the doctors and nurses here seemed to avoid giving him any news. He had told the truth when he told Sam that Daniel would live. He was almost sure of it, but he wouldn’t be able to get rid of that gnawing, sharp fear that it was even worse than it had looked, that something was broken that couldn’t be fixed, and he knew that fear wouldn’t leave until he heard it from an official source and saw Daniel again for himself. 

He also hated the way that he was himself but not himself. Adult Jack could have made some calls and fixed things. Adult Jack wouldn’t have had to lie about being the nephew to a complete bastard, and he wouldn’t have had to lie and make up some story about burglars to justify two grown men with broken necks. He also suspected that adult Jack wouldn’t have lost control so completely and broken their necks, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to regret that. Besides, he wasn’t completely certain that Jack at any age wouldn’t have lost it upon entering that house. But adult Jack might at least have gone about it in a more discreet way; a way that couldn’t so easily be traced back to him, and now the police were looking into the murders and it wouldn’t take them long to realize that Jack’s cover as the nephew didn’t fit.

And now, Carter, Teal’c, and, apparently, Carter’s brother were all coming to help in what amounted to Teal’c kidnapping two children in a stolen vehicle. And knowing the father of those two children, Jack just didn’t think that would go very well. Everything was just perfect. Jack stood a moment longer in the hallway, not really wanting to go back into the waiting room. He leaned against the wall, his eyes closed tiredly. He just wanted all of his team together, alive and unhurt. Finally, knowing he had delayed long enough, he went back to his bony chair and waited.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Daniel woke up slowly and found himself in a familiar position. The sounds that floated around him, the feel of the bed beneath him, and finally the smell all added up to the infirmary. Cracking an eye open, he managed to make out the vague form of Jack sitting nearby. Daniel closed his eye again, not yet ready to face being awake. He tried to remember what might have sent him there, and slowly the last mission came back to him. Malikai had turned a gun on him, Jack had knocked him down…actually that was about all he remembered. 

Suddenly alarmed, both from not really remembering how he got there and, even more importantly, not knowing if anyone else was hurt, he opened his eyes. And that was when everything became very strange.

“Danny?” Jack said, sitting up and leaning closer to him. The form that Daniel had instantly taken to be Jack, though, wasn’t the Jack he knew. Even without his glasses, Daniel could tell the difference in his hair color and his voice.

“Jack?” Daniel asked, confused. It was Jack, wasn’t it? But the moment he spoke, and heard his own high, frightened voice, all thought of this stranger Jack left him. His eyes widening further, he tried to sit up only to find he couldn’t. Something seemed to be strapping him down. 

“Whoa, Danny, easy,” stranger Jack said, reaching out a hand to steady him, but Daniel wasn’t listening. Everything was strange, and wrong, and when he tried again to swing his legs around, pulling at the restraint, he was hit by a sudden, agonizing pain that left him breathless. As the pain jolted through him, memories connected once again, and everything came back. He was a kid again, the giant, the doctor, the bookcase falling for him, he tried to scramble away but it was too late. As he remembered, people came flooding into the room and there were too many people, all towering over him, mixed in with memories, but finally, as the scene played to its end, the bookcase falling, there was Jack’s face. 

“Come on, Daniel, just breathe,” he heard Jack say, his voice calm and steady, and Daniel began to relax. Jack was here, not the giant, and not the doctor. He was safe.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

“If he’s an alien, why do we have to take the car? Why can’t we fly in his space ship?” Mark demanded. They had gotten Mark to go in the car with little difficulty; in fact once Sam was in the car he wasn’t about to let some stranger drive her off without him, but after the first hour of driving, most of which was Sam trying to tell Teal’c which way to go when she didn’t really know herself, he had come out of his confused daze and started asking questions. 

“Duh,” Sam said in answer, “It’s broken.”

“Well how did you meet him then?” Mark asked, “How do you know all this? Wouldn’t that be in the news if a space ship crashed?”

“It’s top secret,” Sam explained, “Dad would know, I’ll bet. But they wouldn’t tell us. And I found him.” Mark shook his head, frustrated. He knew that something wasn’t adding up, but he wasn’t sure exactly what.

“You know what Dad’s going to do when he finds out what we did?” he asked. Sam frowned. She knew that her brother was talking about what he would do to them when he caught them, for running away in their mom’s car with an alien. But the part of Sam that was still able to hold onto her adult thoughts immediately started to see how her dad would think. He wouldn’t see it as running away, it would be like Jack had said; Teal’c stole the car and kidnapped them. And he wouldn’t be happy, particularly with Teal’c. 

“We have to disguise the car,” she announced, “And us. We’re too easy to trace like this.”

“I believe you are correct, Samantha Carter,” Teal’c announced. He startled both of them, after apparently ignoring them for so long while he drove.

“Can’t you just cloak us or something?” Mark demanded.

“I cannot,” Teal’c answered, “I am without my coat.” This got a giggle from Sam, which in turn got a raised eyebrow from Teal’c. When no further comments were made, aside from Mark muttering under his breath, Teal’c spoke again. “Perhaps we should acquire a new vehicle,” 

“We don’t have to do that, we just need to change things a little,” Sam answered, not willing to give up her mother’s car just yet, “Like the license plate. Hey, we should switch plates with someone!”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Mark asked.

“More illegal than stealing an entire car?” Sam asked. 

“I didn’t say we shouldn’t do it, I was just remarking,” Mark answered, “But it won’t work. When dad finds out, he’ll have everyone hunting for us, not just the car.”

“So we change us too,” Sam insisted, “We’ll dye our hair. I could cut mine off and say I’m a boy.”

“Samantha Carter,” Teal’c said, interrupting whatever comment Mark was about to make, “What are our plans once we have reached O’Neill and Daniel Jackson?”

“Well…we get them and bring them back,” Sam answered.

“Have you discussed this plan with O’Neill?” Teal’c asked.

“Sort of. I told him we were coming,” Sam said, squirming slightly in her seat, “He can’t come to us, he’s looking after Daniel. I told you what Jack said.”

“That someone hurt Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c answered, his voice grim. The steering wheel squeaked beneath his grip.

“Ah…And who are these people again?” Mark asked. Sam sighed, leaning back in her chair. Teal’c resumed his silence. 

Chapter 9

Daniel blinked at the police officers. His mind felt shattered and confused. Part of him wanted to just be an eight year old little boy and scream at the men until they went away, or to close in on himself and not say a word. It didn’t help that a good part of his older self wanted the same thing. He didn’t want to talk about what happened. Unfortunately, his older self understood why he had to speak. Jack had managed to get that much through to him on his last visit, even if Daniel had been feeling sleepy and confused at the time. Jack wasn’t there now.

“Mr. Peterson said I was sick. He called my school and said I couldn’t go,” Daniel whispered, making the policemen work at hearing him. One of them was writing down everything he said.

“Were you sick?” the other asked. Daniel glanced towards them. It still seemed strange how big everyone was. He knew it was just because he was small, but their size made him nervous anyway. The child part of himself was scared of them, every sudden movement of those large, strong hands making him cringe. His older self was merely wary, knowing the real trouble they could cause for Jack. He knew he had to convince them that the story Jack had given earlier was true. 

“I…I didn’t feel good,” Daniel answered, not needing to fake his nervousness. He did not want to talk about this, but he knew he had to, so he continued, saying, “So I was there, and Mr. Peterson and his brother. And then a strange man came, and he hurt Mr. Peterson’s brother and shouted a lot, and I was afraid and tried to run away. I don’t remember anything else!” Then he was quiet.

“Can you tell us what this stranger looked like?” a policeman prompted.

“He was really big and strong, and he had a beard. His eyes were scary, and he had wrinkly lines across his forehead.”

“What color was his hair?” the other policeman asked.

“It was brown and gray,” Daniel answered. Then he stopped talking. He hoped the men would go away soon, but they kept wanting to know more about his foster father, more about the intruder, asking leading questions. They seemed most interested in how Daniel had gotten hurt. He said he didn’t remember. They wanted to know if he had been hurt before the accident. They seemed very interested in knowing this. Daniel knew that he had a lot of bruises, some of them much older than from a few days ago. Then they mentioned Jack. Daniel brightened slightly, without even meaning to. 

“He is like my big brother, even though we aren’t really family,” Daniel explained, “Like Mr. Peterson is my pretend dad, except me and Jack chose each other. He’s my friend.”

“How do you know him?” the officer asked.

“We met in the museum,” Daniel answered, “And then he went back home, but we wrote each other lots and lots. Mr. Peterson doesn’t like him though.” The questioning went on. If he and Jack played it right, they’d give the impression that, although Jack lied about being Mr. Peterson’s nephew, everything else they claimed about the intruder was true.

Jack had already given his own version of the story, using as much of the truth as possible, though he had to make a lot of it up. He had to fake a trip to New York that coincided with a time Daniel was there, and he had to fake some letters in Daniel’s handwriting because for the most part Daniel was too out of it to write anything, at least anything legible. Reading between the lines in the letters, Jack claimed he was convinced Mr. Peterson was hurting Daniel. When he couldn’t get his social worker to act, he decided to come to New York himself. There were, of course, holes in his story. 

He called himself Jack Carter because Carter was the first name that popped into his head and would be easy to remember. Unfortunately, it was also information that could prove false if anyone delved too deeply. So far, however, despite the murders none of the police seemed to have seriously considered that Jack had been involved. It was a case were his youth worked for him, as well as the fact that he had stayed at the scene of the crime. The cab driver confirmed that he heard nothing like the struggle that must have happened when the two men were killed after Jack entered the building, just Daniel screaming. The cab driver even swore he saw a glimpse of the intruder running away. So far, Jack hadn’t been arrested. 

````````

“We already stole the license plate, why do we have to change it up?” Mark demanded. Sam ignored him as she carefully applied paint to change an L into an 8. The number 1 had already become a 4 and she thought the 1 on the end could easily become an H. Mark had been annoying them all morning, not happy with Sam and Teal’c insisting he dye his hair black.

“Because if they catch the car we traded with, they’ll start looking for that car’s license plate,” Sam answered.

“So?” Mark said, “You already switched plates around between about five cars, going in all different directions. It’ll take ages for them to track them all down to us. And anyway, I already told you it won’t work. They’ll be looking for this type of car.” 

“I don’t see you coming up with anything,” Sam answered.

“Samantha Carter,” Teal’c said, approaching them, “I have obtained supplies.”

“Don’t call me that,” Sam answered, “I’m a little boy, remember?” She ran her hand through her now short black hair. She had finished the 4 and started on the H.

“You have not yet decided upon a name for me to call you, Samantha Carter,” Teal’c reminded her.

“Oh, right,” Sam answered, frowning slightly, “Well I was going to go with Sam, but that’s too close to my real name; someone might see through it.” Teal’c considered her.

“I will call you George and Jacob Hammond,” Teal’c decided. Sam wrinkled her nose in distaste. Part of the reason she had taken so long to come up with a name was because she wanted something cool. 

“They are the names of great warriors,” Teal’c reminded her, apparently sensing her distaste.

“Fine, fine,” Sam answered at last, “Just don’t tell anyone back home.”

“Wait, I don’t want to be called Jacob,” Mark insisted, “That’s Dad’s name. What’s wrong with Mark?”

“I thought we explained the whole super spy thing to you,” Sam answered. Now that she knew Mark didn’t like his fake name either, Sam found she suddenly loved them. After all, she supposed Teal’c could have chosen worse. She didn’t know what she would have done if Teal’c had suggested something like Kinsey. Grinning happily while Mark complained she finished up with the paint. Hopefully, they’d make it all the way to find Jack and Daniel without getting arrested.

`````

Jacob Carter was not a happy man. In fact, despite his outwardly harsh expression, he was a man who was desperately scared out of his wits. His children were missing. They had been missing for over a day, and all signs pointed towards kidnapping, stealing them away in their own car. Jacob wanted to find the bastard responsible and tear them limb from limb. He wanted to hold his children in his arms and never let go again. He wanting anything but this heart wrenching waiting, not knowing what is going on, who has his children or why.

There was only one witness, who claimed he had seen Samantha and Mark early in the morning being dragged off by a giant black man. According to the witness, he had tried to save them but the large man overpowered him. No one else had seen anything. His children left for school and disappeared. So far, the police had discovered nothing of any real use, though after some searching they discovered another case of a disappearance. A woman claimed her son had been on his way to Colorado but had never made it there. Mrs. O’Neill had been frantic, insisting something must have happened to him, but so far the police had not been convinced it was anything more than a runaway. Now, considering the locality and timing, Jacob wondered if the cases were connected. Whether they were or not, Jacob was certain of only one thing. He would find his children, and he would hurt the person responsible. From the way Mrs. O’Neill had spoken to him, he suspected she felt the same thing. The kidnappers would pay.

Chapter 10

“Awake George Hammond,” a voice announced, “We approach the city of New York.” Sam blinked her eyes sleepily and lifted her head. When she had first curled up to sleep, she had decided there was another plus to being a kid. It was much easier to find a comfortable way to lie. Now, however, she took it back. Sleeping in a car was uncomfortable no matter what your age, especially when the driver insisted that she wear her seatbelt.

“We there yet?” Mark mumbled sleepily at her side. 

“What direction should I proceed to, George Hammond?” the voice asked, and this time Sam recognized it as Teal’c. The repeated use of ‘George Hammond’ made her sit up, suddenly worried that she was sleeping in the presence of the general, before she woke up enough to remember. Teal’c was talking to her.

“I think they’re at a hospital,” Sam mumbled, “If you drive up to one, I can use my alien detector and find out if they’re there.” Then she lay her head back down and closed her eyes. Her head rest moved, then sat up leaving her falling against the seat.

“Is it my turn to drive yet?” Mark asked, rubbing at his eyes.

“You don’t get to, you’re not old enough,” Sam answered into the seat.

“Why not? You got to, and you’re younger than me!” Mark answered indignantly.

“I have a driver’s license,” Sam answered, still feeling a bit confused. She knew she was a kid, but at the same time she knew she had a license, and in her half-awake state she couldn’t quite figure out how little sense that would make to Mark.

“You do not!” Mark answered, “You just stole Mom’s!”

“We are now surrounded by other drivers,” Teal’c announced, interrupting their argument, “Would not someone notice if a child were to drive our vehicle, Jacob Hammond?”

“Right, too many people now,” Sam mumbled, still speaking into the car seat. 

“We approach a hospital, George Hammond,” Teal’c announced, and Sam jerked herself upright.

“How do you know how to find a hospital?” she asked, blinking her eyes.

“I followed the signs,” Teal’c answered and Sam blinked. Of course Teal’c would know how to follow signs; just because he wasn’t from Earth didn’t make him stupid.

“Right,” she said, “I’ll get my gun thing.” Then she twisted in her seat to reach into the back. A moment later, she had her detecting device in her hands. She turned it on and it began to squeal. Belatedly, she realized she had it pointed towards Teal’c. Realizing that they were stopped, in a parking lot, she got out of the car and walked around to make sure Teal’c wouldn’t interfere with the signal and tried again. At least the sudden, high pitched noise had effectively woken her up. Unfortunately, it only took her a moment to figure out that Jack and Daniel weren’t at this hospital.

“Hey Teal’c,” she said, “Stand behind me while I turn in a circle; let me see if I can at least get a general direction.” Teal’c did as she asked, turning with her to avoid being in front of the device while Mark rolled his eyes from the back seat of the car. After turning twice, Sam finally found a direction that seemed to pick up a slight beep. Unfortunately, the road didn’t go in that exact direction.

“That way,” she said anyway, and Teal’c nodded his head, making note of the direction. As Sam and Teal’c climbed back into the car, Mark stretched.

“Hey,” he said, “Are we stopping for breakfast?”

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’

“How many days have we been here?” Daniel asked.

“In the hospital?” Jack asked, sitting up slowly and stretching.

“No, I mean, here in 1974,” Daniel answered. Jack frowned, trying to do a rough calculation in his head. It felt like months since this whole thing had started, but he knew it hadn’t really been that long. 

“About a week,” Jack finally answered, not entirely sure himself. The last few days had kind of melded together into one long blur.

“Only that?” Daniel asked, sounding surprised, “It feels like at least one month.” They were both silent and then Daniel said, “What about Sam and Teal’c?”

“I told you,” Jack answered, “They’re going to meet us here and then we’re going to all get back to Colorado, go through the Stargate, and fix this.”

“How does that work?” Daniel asked, “Are we changing history here, or will everything go back to the way it was?”

“Carter said it was like a bubble,” Jack answered, as though that should explain everything. Daniel squinted at him.

“Chewing gum bubble or soap bubble?” he finally asked.

“She didn’t say,” Jack answered, “You know how I hate technobabble.” 

“Oh well,” Daniel said, “So long as we know we’re a bubble.” Jack grinned, then frowned, turning his head towards the door. What was that weird, high pitched beeping sound?

Chapter 11

Standing in an otherwise empty hallway, it occurred to Sam that she hadn’t thought this through very well. The constant high pitched beeping that informed them they were in the right place was not helping their intention of sneaking around until they found Jack and Daniel. They had gotten frowns and disapproving glances ever since they walked through the doors and at least three people stopped them to ask if they needed help and to suggest that such toys do not belong in a place where people are sick. Sam obligingly turned her gun off only to turn it back on again the moment the well-meaning nurse or doctor was out of ear shot. 

Teal’c wasn’t helping things either, looming as he was and giving off the impression that an attempt to approach him would make that person glad they were already in a hospital with readily available treatment. Mark, if anything, was worse as he demanded, loud enough to make even Teal’c cringe, why they couldn’t just ask what room Daniel was in and why would an alien detecting gun detect humans. He still wasn’t quite convinced that anything they told him was real. Finally, though, after a few false turns on the wrong level, Sam was fairly certain they had arrived at the right door. Receiving yet another glare from a passing nurse, Sam finally turned her gun off again as they stood before the door. If this wasn’t the right room, she decided they would just have to ask for directions. It wasn’t as if they could be any more conspicuous than they were anyway.

She looked up at Teal’c who nodded his head, his calm never betraying his own nervousness. Then Mark grew impatient, rolling his eyes, and threw the door open and walked through. Teal’c and Sam followed.

Mark didn’t go far into the room, perhaps startled by the fact that there really was a little boy in the hospital bed and some teenager sitting near him. Sam rushed past him to the bed, crying “Daniel!” partly in the shock of really seeing him as a little boy, and partly in horror of his condition. Her first thought was that he was so small. Lying in bed with an awful, yellowish bruise on his face, plaster on his legs, and some sort of splint on his arm, he didn’t look like he could possibly be older than five, let alone be almost nine. Shock was quickly replaced by a surge of anger, anger that Daniel was hurt, anger that a little kid was hurt, that anyone could look at the child that Daniel had been and purposefully cause him pain…

“Daniel Jackson, Colonel O’Neill,” Teal’c said, and Sam finally looked up from assessing Daniel’s condition so that she could really see her friends. Jack was another shock, seeing him so young. From the way he and Daniel were staring at her, she suspected they were just as shocked to see her at ten.

“Sam?” Daniel finally asked, his voice sounding so young and timid that Sam wanted to grab him in her arms right then. 

“Black hair?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow in a way that was distinctly Jack, no matter his age, and Sam remembered belatedly her attempt at a disguise. She scowled slightly, having no doubt of what was going through Jack’s mind.

“It’s usually blond, I dyed it,” she said and then, when he continued to smirk at her, she said, “I dyed it black. From blond. Mark dyed his hair too.” At the mention of his name, her brother suddenly became unfrozen.

“You’re real!” he blurted out, blinking rapidly in surprise.

“Shouldn’t we be?” Jack asked, glancing questioningly over his head towards Sam and Teal’c. While Sam launched into an elaborate explanation as to why Mark was there, why their hair was black, and, most importantly, how cool her alien detector gun was, Daniel looked back and forth between the new arrivals, finally latching onto Teal’c. It was comforting to find a single person who remained unchanged, despite recent events. Teal’c was just as large and solid and familiar as he remembered. Luckily, without his glasses he wasn’t able to make out Teal’c’s expression. Most people, who didn’t know him well, would call it disapproving. Daniel, who did know him well, would have called it alternating between murderous rage and the sort of soft tenderness most often reserved for his son. 

Jack, who didn’t need glasses, sent Teal’c a look of understanding which didn’t match his youthful features. Daniel the adult had already pushed every paternal instinct they had, despite knowing that he was normally quite capable of looking after himself. Daniel the child would probably never survive their combined mothering and protective instincts.

“Teal’c,” Daniel said in greeting with just a hint of a smile. Any hint of murderous rage was immediately replaced with a warmth that belied his tough Jaffa reputation.

“Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said, “It is good to see you.”

“Hey, what about me, isn’t anyone glad to see me?” Jack demanded. Unfortunately, this statement was made in the middle of one of Sam’s long and winding speeches and she finally latched onto the fact that Jack wasn’t listening.

“And that’s why Apophis was wearing the pink tutu,” she finished sharply in the short silence that followed, and was rewarded by four heads swiveling towards her. Mark looked completely baffled, Jack not much less so, and Daniel got that look he sometimes had when trying to work out a particularly puzzling translation. Teal’c merely raised an eyebrow.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Daniel said at last, “But where did he get the glitter?” Then both kids were giggling and it was definitely Sam and Daniel, no matter what their ages now were. Jack and Teal’c looked at each other, an understanding passing between them. Later, when they were alone, Jack would fill in the gaps concerning the bastards who hurt Daniel; later they could rant and, firmly out of earshot, they could go all fatherly about how cute Daniel and Sam looked as kids and Jack could lambaste anyone who dared to suggest that he, at eighteen, was cute. For now, they would pretend that everything was normal, that Sam hadn’t just squealed because her brother pinched her, that Daniel wasn’t lying in a hospital bed covered in plaster. For now, they would be SG-1, on another mission where three of them just happened to be momentarily youthened. The mood considerably lightened, they finally began to talk.

Chapter 12

Jacob Carter stood grimly at attention next to the less rigid but equally solemn countenance of Jonathan O’Neill. Between them their wives looked on teary-eyed, pleading with a nation for their children.

“If you have seen any sign of these children,” Jacob Carter finished, “Please call this number. There will be a substantial reward.”

Sam, Jack, Teal’c, and Mark all watched the television in a dazed sort of horror. Antiquated picture aside, the projected photographs of Sam, Mark, and Jack were enough to make their lives miserable. They had become too well known about the hospital to hope that no one made the connection, particularly when the police came on to bring forth the eyewitness account of a large, black man as their abductor. 

“We have to leave,” Jack insisted, “That’s all. We have to leave and…change our looks.”

“Again?” Mark demanded, running his fingers through his darkened hair. Sam looked equally indignant, playing the part of a boy. 

“Fine,” Jack said, “I’ll change my appearance. And Danny’s.” 

“Daniel Jackson’s photograph has not been displayed,” Teal’c pointed out.

“Not yet,” Jack agreed, “But think about it. We’re kidnapping him. If the nice doctors and nurses remember us, then see the photo and decide, black hair on you two or not, we must be them, then they’ll be looking for all of us.”

“I can’t believe Mom and Dad were on Television,” Mark said, a hint of envy in his voice and a good deal of trepidation, “We are going to be in so much trouble when they find us.”

“They won’t find us,” Sam assured him stubbornly, but at the same time her eyes turned longingly towards the screen where her parents had been displayed.

“Right,” Jack agreed. He preferred not to think about seeing his parents. The back in time situation was weird enough without having to relive moments of his life. “Well, I’m going to go see if the doctors are done…doctoring Daniel.” He turned and walked out of the waiting room.

“Hey,” Mark said, poking his sister sharply in the shoulder, “What’d you mean, ‘they won’t find us’? We have to go home sometime. I mean, we aren’t running away forever and ever.”

“Not forever and ever,” Sam agreed, twisting away from him, “I told you already, we have to get Teal’c, Jack, and Daniel to the spaceship in Colorado and they can leave the planet and then y…we go home.”

“You were about to say ‘you’, weren’t you?” Mark demanded suspiciously, “You aren’t flying off with some alien without me.”

“No!” Sam answered sharply, her voice squeaking slightly. This was in part due to her brother’s attempts to pull her hair. She had forgotten for the moment that her hair was much shorter, and much harder to grab than it had been at the beginning of the trip. Unfortunately, Mark had a lot of practice in tackling his younger sibling, and he managed to grab hold of her ear. Sam shrieked in ear splitting fury, promising retaliation.

“Jacob Hammond,” Teal’c interrupted, “You will stop hurting your brother.” Both children jumped, having half forgotten they weren’t alone.

“I’m not hurting he...im,” Mark insisted, after taking a second to work out who Teal’c was talking to. Sam slid out of his grip, sticking her tongue out from an angle where Teal’c couldn’t see.

“Come on, let’s go see Daniel,” Sam said, smiling sweetly at her brother’s glare as she skipped lightly towards the hall.

“You will behave in this place of healing,” Teal’c admonished, whether to Sam, Mark, or both it was unclear. Then Teal’c took the lead, attempting to step between the two siblings. Unfortunately, this only lasted until they had to pass others in the hall, and then Sam and Mark slipped behind their larger guardian. Then Mark made another pass at Sam’s hair.

This time, Sam curled away, latching onto his wrist and sent him over her back and to the floor, crashing into the back of Teal’c legs. She looked as surprised as anyone; the move had been more by reflex than intention.

“George Hammond!” Teal’c rumbled and Sam cringed while Mark sat up, more startled than hurt.

“Yes?” someone answered, turning around in response to Teal’c’s reprimand. All three turned to see a surprisingly familiar but completely unexpected face. 

“General Hammond?” Sam asked, her voice hesitant. The man stared at them in confusion, until the sight of Teal’c’s imposing form caught him and dawning comprehension lit up his eyes. 

“Don’t tell me,” Mark said, from his position on the floor, “He’s an alien too.” The youthful apparition of their general looked down at Mark, then at Sam, still standing over him with a slightly guilty stance, and then once more at Teal’c. 

“Hey, guys,” Jack said, walking right into the middle of it, “The rooms open but Daniel’s kinda out…of…it…do I have something on my face or what?”

“You’re the missing children!” Hammond exclaimed, looking slightly startled. Luckily, no one else was in the hallway to hear his cry. Jack finally turned around, saw young George Hammond, and turned away again.

“Ok,” he said, “This is either very good, or very bad.”

“Indeed,” Teal’c said, raising an eyebrow. The effect was slightly spoiled, however, by the giggling coming from about his knees. 

“All right…George,” Jack said, “I think we better fill you in. I’m sure you have a few questions.”

“A few,” George agreed, his brow furrowing as he tried to work out what was going on. Together, the small group continued down the hall. 

Chapter 13

Daniel closed his eyes quickly when he heard the door open, just in case it was a nurse coming to poke and prod again. Only half faking the sleepy stillness that filled his limbs, he listened to the low murmur of voices that were slowly filling the room. He recognized Jack and the surprisingly high pitched voice of Sam. There was, however, another voice he didn’t recognize, at least not right off. He cracked his eyes and got the blurred impression of a young man.

“So you’re telling me that you’re the same people I met five years ago?” the man asked with an obvious Texas drawl and just a hint of skepticism.

“Sort of. These are our bodies in the present, but our minds are kinda from the future.” Daniel’s eyes opened wider, his sluggish brain finally making the connection of who the strange man was.

“Hey, wait a minute,” a young boy’s voice interjected, “I thought you said you were all aliens! No one said anything about the future.”

“Shut up, Mark,” another youthful voice answered, “Us grown ups are talking.”

“You ain’t no grown up!”

“Are not a grown up,” Jack mumbled, though his attention was obviously elsewhere even as Sam exclaimed, “Am too! You heard him, my mind is all grown up, it’s just my body that’s small.”

“Gen’al Hammond?” Daniel whispered, looking towards the stranger in confusion. Though his voice was soft, he got everyone’s attention immediately. Thankfully, Jack noticed his squinting and placed his newly acquired glasses over his eyes. Now he was able to put the face with the voice, and for a moment he was completely disoriented when the features didn’t match his memory.

“Lieutenant Hammond,” Jack corrected gently, “You remember?”

“Nyet,” Daniel answered, smiling and Jack grinned back.

“He’s still a little doped up,” Jack explained to the others.

“I wanna know the truth!” Mark exclaimed suddenly from where Sam had wrestled him to the floor, “If he isn’t an alien why does he have a snake thing inside him? And there is no way my little sister is from the future. And how do any of you know him, and don’t give me nothing about pen pals from New York!” He pulled on Sam’s hair for emphasis, earning an ear splitting shriek and a kick to the shins.

“Jacob Hammond. George Hammond,” Teal’c rumbled disapprovingly.

“And why does he keep saying my name?” Hammond demanded, “I think I’d like an explanation as well.”

Jack sighed, looking around the crowded room and then back towards Daniel. Daniel struggled to stay awake, deciding this was much more interesting than his usual visits.

“It’s okay,” Sam insisted, “If it works out he won’t remember anyway. And if it doesn’t, we already changed things drastically, right?”

“I like these changes,” Daniel mumbled, remembering foster care the first time around without a friend in sight. Now he had six people looking after him, assuming Hammond didn’t decide they were all crazy and walk away. Jack stroked his hair gently, and Daniel felt his eyes closing again.

“Sir,” Sam said, untangling herself from Mark and approaching Hammond, “Why are you here in the hospital?” Daniel opened his eyes again, listening hard, though already he felt them drooping. Jack’s hand was still stroking his hair in a soothing pattern and it was hard to resist the lure of sleep.

“I’m here for my daughter,” Hammond answered, glancing involuntarily towards Daniel, “We were here on vacation when she said her tummy hurt really bad. The doctors called it appendicitis. They had to do surgery.”

“Ouch,” Daniel murmured, his unbound arm coming up protectively over his abdomen.

“Did you have that, son?” Hammond asked kindly, catching the movement.

“Not yet,” he answered. Hammond blinked at him, then turned back towards Jack and the others.

“My wife is already with her,” Hammond continued, a definite note of worry in his voice, “Theresa is just four years old.”

“She’ll be fine,” Jack assured him, “The Theresa I know is a beautiful woman with two lovely daughters of her own.”

“Right,” Hammond answered, “Well then, as it is, you’ll understand why I would like to hurry things up and get to her. So, are you those children in the news? And is he the one they are saying kidnapped them?”

“I did not ‘kidnap’ anyone,” Teal’c answered in an offended tone, “It was, in fact, Samantha Carter’s plan.”

Daniel was only half listening now, though he made an attempt to raise his hand to reassure Teal’c. He understood why he would take such offense at kidnapping charges, after what Apophis had made him do. Finally, Sam launched into a long and detailed explanation. Daniel listened more to her lecturing tone than the words and stifled back a giggle. Mini Sam going on about wormholes and time bubbles just sounded strange. Jack was stroking his hair again, and his limbs felt strangely heavy. He rode upon the waves of Sam’s voice, his eyes mere slits until, finally, they slid shut completely and everything faded away.

Chapter 14

_“We are going to New York, Daniel,” his mom told him, smiling with excitement. Daniel listened to her solemnly from her arms._

_“No you aren't,” he answered, his young voice holding all the authority he could muster, “I rode a bubble to get here and stop you.”_

_“Listen to your mother,” his father admonished from where he crouched over his latest find. It looked strangely like a DHD, though Daniel was vaguely certain that hadn't been at the dig the first time around._

_“No, really,” Daniel said, “I'm from the future. We stay here and you don't die and the giant and the doctor won't hurt me.”_

_“But if we're here, how will your friends find you?” his mother asked reasonably, her fingers stroking his hair gently. Daniel furrowed his brow, trying to figure that one out._

_“Okay,” he said at last, “We can go to New York. But you must not stand under the cover stone.”_

_“If that is what you want,” his mother agreed, just as solemnly, and standing up she set him down, not upon desert sands but upon a tiled floor. Now his father was watching as someone hooked the DHD up near a stargate as part of the exhibit. It was next to where the cover stone was being raised, and he turned towards it._

_“No!” Daniel screamed, and surprisingly his parents listened. His father and mother stood with him and now it was his father's hand stroking his hair. It felt nice, safe._

_“See, Sam, we can change the past!” Daniel exclaimed happily as he began to lead his parents away from the room. Suddenly, a looming presence blocked their path._

_“This isn't how it happens, boy!” the giant growled._

_“No!” Daniel screamed again, but now the doctor was holding him, making him watch helplessly as the giant dragged his parents back towards their death. He shoved them into place where they stood peacefully waiting while Daniel screamed and screamed._

“Daniel!” someone shouted in his ear, and his eyes flew open, searching wildly for the giant or the doctor or maybe even his parents alive and well.

“ _It's okay_ ,” a voice soothed him, too youthful for the people of his dream, “ _Everything is all right_.” The arms around him weren't the doctor's anymore. Slowly, as his panic faded, Daniel realized that he was sobbing, his throat hoarse from begging for the giant to stop, to be let go, for his parents to run away and be safe. The mind numbing fear and panic turned over into a horrible, ugly sadness with the realization that it was already too late. His parents were dead. They couldn't be saved.

With that realization he stopped struggling against the arms that held him and instead leaned into them, accepting their comfort and the soothing words, giving over to grief and pain that filled his eight-year-old body beyond comprehension. The words of comfort washed over him with a homesick familiarity that he clung to, and slowly he let go of fear and sorrow, stilling within the strong, protective arms.

“ _Daddy_ ,” he murmured, half asleep and knowing it wasn't really his father, yet not knowing. For once he didn't struggle against the child emotions but allowed himself to relax until he was soothed back into lighter dreams.

The others in the room watched him drifting back into sleep in solemn silence. His sudden screams had been alarming to say the least. Jack had had to climb half into the bed with him to sooth him, careful of his arm and legs while he spoke to him in a low, almost hypnotic sounding voice. Everyone else watched silently, with the exception of Hammond who had already left to be with his wife and daughter. He hadn't come to any real decisions yet, but at least he hadn't gone straight for the authorities to turn them in. A nurse did pop her head in in response to the screams, but after a quick check over she left Daniel in Jack's capable hands.

“Sir?” Sam whispered, when it looked like Daniel had finally fallen asleep again, his body twisted in an almost painful looking position so that his head could burrow into Jack while his legs remained straight.

“I ain't never heard nobody scream like that,” Mark whispered in turn, his voice part in awe, part horrified.

“What language was that you were speaking?” Sam asked, before Jack could begin to correct Mark's grammar.

“Arabic,” Jack answered shortly, his voice soft, “He was dreaming about his parents, I think.”

“It's too bad we didn't go back just one more year,” Sam said, “He'd get to see them again. But then they'd be dead again. And he'd have to leave them to find us and get back home.” She was beginning to feel like sobbing herself, for Daniel, for her own mom, for herself and for the entire impossible situation. It was worse than the gamekeeper because this was much more real. Would it really be so bad to just live this life as it was? Her adult self was horrified at the way tears began to feel her eyes, but at that moment she wasn't certain even her adult self would have been able to stop them. She was surprised when large, strong arms encircled her.

“It is not wrong, to honor the dead with your tears,” a deep voice whispered, vibrating within a strong, solid chest. 

“It's all right, Sam,” her brother said, awkwardly leaning over to pat her back, not even knowing why she was so upset, and she smiled in spite of herself, even as she let the tears fall. 

“I didn't know you spoke Arabic,” she said, hiccuping slightly through her tears. Just this once, she leaned back into Teal'c's arms. If they stayed in the past, he would be stuck here too. He'd never see his son again. Sometimes, it was better to let the past alone. Besides, she didn't think the bubble would allow them to just go on in this alternate live indefinitely.

“Yeah,” Jack answered, his own face not entirely dry, “Not as dumb as I look.”

“Do you believe Lieutenant Hammond will aid us, O'Neill?” Teal'c asked, not letting go of Sam.

“If it doesn't hurt his family,” Jack answered, “I think he might. He probably has a soft spot for kids. Especially sad looking, hurt kids. If it was just you and me, we might have a hard time of it.”

“If it was just you and me, we would likely not be in need of assistance.”

“I still don't understand what is going on,” Mark insisted, looking uncertain and young. It is a strange disadvantage to be one of the oldest children there, yet to have the youngest mind of all of them. It didn't help that his younger sister was also his older, adult sister. Despite their explanation to Hammond, he couldn't quite grasp it.

“We're in a time bubble,” Sam answered from Teal'c's arms, “It's like if you have a piece of string. One end is our time, the other end is your time. We all exist at both ends, but at different ages. So the string wraps around on itself so the ends are touching. Now time runs in a loop, and once it gets to the end of the string, it starts over again and we are back in time again. But the machine separated us out because we were running it. So our minds don't do the loop with our bodies. Our minds keep on going in a straight line. So our minds are from the end of the string, but they're trapped with our bodies running in a loop. We have to pop the bubble to fix things and undo the loop.

“Wow,” Mark said, “I think I actually understood that. Still think you're crazy, though.”

“Carter,” Jack said in amazement, “An explanation that doesn't involve five syllable words! I think this time bubble is good for you.”

Sam stuck her tongue out towards him before she could stop herself, then decided he deserved it anyway.

“Samantha Carter,” Teal'c rumbled from around her, “Does this mean if we do not correct this time bubble, we will return once more to this time?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Sam answered, trying to picture time in her head. This was hard because it held a few more dimensions than the mind's eye was generally comfortable with. “In about thirty years,” she added, “At the same time it sent us back the first time.”

“Well hey,” Jack said, “So if we screw up this time, we get a second chance.” Then he frowned, looking down at Daniel. This was not an experience he wanted to relive.

“Maybe,” Sam answered, “But I don't know how this is effecting real time, outside the bubble. If it goes on too long, it might break apart our connection to the rest of the galaxy still in real time, causing our own reality to either become a mini universe in itself, no longer connected to the rest of the universe, which would probably be unstable and lead to our ultimate destruction, or it might...”

“Right,” Jack interrupted, “Delay is bad. So we get it right the first time.” Sam was silent, but her youthful mind relentlessly created scenario after scenario and she leaned back into Teal'c's arms again, reaching for someone who was solid, and alive, and real. 

Chapter 15

“Ulysses to Skywalker, Operation free D is a go,” Sam whispered in a conspiratory voice into her walkie talkie. Nearby, Jack began to hum the theme song to a spy movie that wouldn't appear for at least ten more years. Teal'c was not there to give them odd looks so they took the opportunity to give in to their childishness. Not that Sam was certain Jack wouldn't be humming anyway. He often did the odd, the childish, or the bizarre as a way to ease tension.

“Copy that,” the slightly garbled voice of her brother came on over her walkie talkie, “The Falcon is in place and ready to roll.” Just barely within range of the microphone, Sam thought she heard the low rumble of an 'indeed'. The walkie talkies had been a master stroke in their escape plans. When Mark had come up with the suggestion it had been quickly vetoed, both because there was some worry that they would mess up hospital equipment and because Jack had pointed out they were too weak. That was before Sam got a hold of them. Not only had she super powered their range, she had found a way so that it would whine if it found anything else running on their frequency.

“Now for phase two,” Sam whispered, nodding towards Jack and then messing with the additions to her walkie talkie. It hadn't been too hard to find a way to foil any security cameras in the area. It wasn't like they were running on the most topnotch technology that she had ever come across. Jack continued to hum his spy tune, waiting for the part where he actually had to do something. She adjusted the frequency slightly on her walkie talkie.

“Ulysses to Daedalus, Operation Free D is a go,” she whispered again, “The cyclops are blind, I repeat, the cyclops are eyes are blind. Commencing Freeze Napoleon now. You have a go, I repeat, you have a go.”

“Roger that,” an older voice answered, and Sam grinned. How come this stuff never seemed so cool when she was grown up? Maybe because it had always felt too serious then; now it still felt like a game. Jack gave his song a rousing finish before going into stealth mode. Together, they approached the nurse's station. It was essential that no one see anything that they could report later.

For the moment, the hall was empty but for the one nurse on duty. 

“Hey,” Jack said to the nurse, leaning over the desk to grasp her attention. Sam kept lookout.

Meanwhile, Hammond made his way into Daniel's room. Daniel was still sleeping and so Hammond lightly shook his shoulder. He awoke, blinking and groggy.

“Gen'al Hammond?” he whispered, looking slightly confused. Sometimes, when he had been sleeping, Daniel forgot what had happened.

“Just Lieutenant, son,” he answered gently, “I'm here to get you out of here.” Daniel gave no fuss and Hammond began to unravel Daniel from his remaining slings. The brace on his arm was gone but his legs were still done up in casts so Hammond had a wheelchair ready to push him out. He could have carried him, of course, but if anyone saw them that would arouse more suspicion.

“Where's Jack?” Daniel mumbled as Hammond got him situated in the chair. He was still doped up and gave no reaction when the lieutenant jostled his leg.

“He's going to join as at the car, remember?” Hammond whispered, giving in to the urge to smooth back Daniel's hair. It didn't matter how many times he had been told Daniel's real age; he still saw a tiny kid. That was probably how he had been convinced to help in the first place. Never mind the risks, that he could be sent to prison or worse; he took one look into the kids wide blue eyes and he was gone. The hardest part had been to convince his wife.

“Where are we going?” Daniel asked earnestly but sleepily, as he was wheeled out the door. Hammond sighed silently to himself. Jack had warned him about how the kid liked to talk. When he was wide awake, he seemed so cowed and silent most of the time, but drugged up he would mumble to himself for hours.

“Home,” Hammond whispered back to him, hoping he would accept that and lie still. He needn't have worried. Daniel was already asleep again.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

“I want, I want to talk in the radio,” pleaded a very young sounding Theresa. She reached out with small hands.

“It's a walkie talkie,” Mark grumbled, holding it tightly to himself. Taking on the important task of the getaway car had seemed more exciting before he realized he'd be stuck with the four year old.

“Remember what I said, sweetie?” Theresa's mom asked, “What did I say about the radio?”

“Not toy?” Theresa asked, and her mom beamed at her.

“That's right. We need it remember, to help Daniel.” At the mention of Daniel, Theresa gave a hundred watt smile. He had been introduced to her as the poor little boy with broken legs and no parents who was being held captive in the hospital. This was while Daniel was sleeping; no one had dared to give his story while he was awake, but Theresa had been enthralled and desperate that he be saved.

“We save Daniel,” she agreed, smiling happily.

“Indeed,” agreed the fourth member of the flight squad. Everyone had thought it best to keep him in the car; he was too recognizable especially after the programs on the news. It was apparent that the Carters and the O'Neills were not going to give up easily. 

“But I want,” Theresa said from her position in her mother's lap, “I want to help.”

“You're too little,” Mark proclaimed from the backseat. 

“No!” Theresa screamed back at him and her mother shushed her.

“You are helping, remember?” she said, “You help by being really quiet while we wait.”

“And Daniel will come?” Theresa asked, worriedly.

“That's right,” her mother agreed. Theresa stuck her tongue out at Mark. Teal'c looked out the window in silence. They had been waiting for a long time. At least five minutes now.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

“And that's when we realized, they weren't hats, they were socks!”

The nurse stared at him with horrified fascination at his ability to talk nonstop when his audience didn't show the slightest bit of interest.

“Don't you have somewhere you need to be?” she asked desperately, “You know that visiting hours are about to be over.

“Does that mean you have to sit here all alone?” the little boy asked while the adolescent just shrugged in the face of the cold reception. “I wouldn't want to sit all alone in a place like this. It's spooky when no one is around but sick people locked in their rooms and then what if someone is screaming because they woke up in surgery, maybe their ghost would keep walking around at night!” The bewildered stare moved from the taller boy to the shorter. They didn't really look like brothers. One had black hair and the other brown. She vaguely remembered there had been another black haired boy running around with them. 

“Come on, George,” the older one said, “You don't want to give the lady ideas like that!” The adolescent gave her a wink and she smiled weakly at him. At least he had stopped trying to flirt with her. Suddenly, a soft crackle came from the smaller boy's backpack. She leaned over the desk, frowning.

“Toys of that sort are not allowed in the hospital,” she told him sternly. He nodded meekly up at her, before taking off at a run around a corner. The older boy gave her a shrug and took off after him. She considered following, but ten minutes straight of talk from those two was enough for anyone to endure. They could be someone else's problem.

Around the corner, Sam skidded to a halt, looked around to make sure she was alone, and turned up her walkie talkie.

“Ulysses here,” she whispered. She waited for a moment, hoping she hadn't blown anyone's cover, but a moment later a voice answered her.

“Daedalus to Ulysses,” a voice answered, “We have flown the labyrinth, I repeat, we have flown the labyrinth. We have Icarus and are waiting.” 

“Roger that, Ulysses is fleeing the cave. See you soon.” Then Sam turned it back down and put it back in her backpack.

“They have him?” Jack whispered to her, after checking around the corner to make sure the nurse wasn't going to follow or send orderlies after them.

“They have him,” Sam confirmed, and together they stealthily made there way back out of the hospital. Jack commenced humming again and Sam welded her alien detector gun. The few people they met gave them indulgent smiles or admonishing glares and then didn't give them a second glance. Sam was right; kids could get away with a lot.

Chapter 16

Lieutenant Hammond's car had grown very crowded. Jack, Teal'c, and Mark were all crammed into the back seat, and all with a child in their laps. Daniel, still sleeping soundly was held in the strong, protective arms of Teal'c while Jack had the rather more wriggly and less appreciative Sam in his. Mark had been stuck with Theresa after the Hammonds had voiced the worry that holding her in the front might draw more attention than having her in the back. Mark was less than pleased.

“Why couldn't we have kept mom's car?” he whined, when Theresa had first been dumped into his lap. Theresa took it in stride when she realized she'd be right next to her precious Daniel. She kept petting his hair even after a stern warning not to wake him.

“That vehicle was too easy to trace,” Teal'c reminded him. He didn't add that it had been abandoned two days before, around the time the Hammonds had finally agreed to help. They didn't want it found in the hospital parking lot in case Daniel's disappearance might be tied to Jack, Sam, and Mark. Teal'c had, in fact, driven it down country lanes and finally deposited it in a lake before being driven back by the lieutenant. They had all been careful not to mention this to Mark or Sam; it was their mother's car after all. They hoped that, with nothing to tie them to the Hammonds, they'd make it all the way into Colorado without a hitch. That is, if they didn't kill each other first.

“Sam, dear, I don't care how old you think you are,” Mrs. Hammond admonished, “It is not appropriate behavior to kick your brother. 'Resa, hands to yourself, let the poor boy sleep.”

“But,” Theresa protested and then went on to explain what she was doing in garbled English which no one but her mother understood.

“Hands to yourself,” her mother answered sternly. Theresa complied, for almost an entire five minutes before she started petting Daniel's arm, mumbling soothing sorts of sounds.

“Oof,” Jack gasped, as Sam, twisting about in his lap, elbowed him in the stomach once more. Jack didn't care how small Sam looked at the moment; she still weighed a ton and was entirely too old to be in someone's lap.

“Call me Pierre,” Sam said suddenly, this time elbowing Jack in the chest because she twisted too quickly towards the front. When her statement was met by silence, she said, “Sam is too close to my real name, and I can't be George anymore, so I want to be Pierre. Pierre du Bois.”

“Stone of the wood,” a very sleepy voice mumbled from Teal'c's lap and Theresa gave an excited gasp, but Daniel didn't say anything more.

“What kinda stupid name is Pierre?” Mark demanded, “And I don't wanna be a dumb wah. We're brothers, remember?”

“It's du bois, you uncultured cretin,” Sam answered, lashing out with her leg. Unfortunately, Mark moved and Sam caught Theresa's leg instead. Theresa gave a piercing scream and then sobbed out some incoherent words while Sam mumbled sorry in a not very apologetic tone. In truth, she was slightly embarrassed while Mrs. Hammond scolded them both. It had been a long time since a parental figure had felt the need to correct her behavior like this.

“How far is it to Colorado?” Teal'c asked, his voice as calm as ever despite the slight twitch in his eye. In his lap, Daniel sat up groggily and looked around.

“Daniel!” Theresa exclaimed, her tears stopping immediately, and she reached out a hand to pat him on the head. Not being able to reach, she settled for his arm. Daniel stared at her, then twisted about to stare up at Teal'c, a slightly bewildered expression on his face.

“Daniel Jackson,” Teal'c said, “You remember Theresa Hammond?” Some of his bewilderment left him.

“You were sick,” he remembered, “Are you feeling better?” When she did nothing but continue to pet his arm and croon unintelligible words at him, he decided to ignore her for the moment. He looked around the car, still feeling out of sorts. He vaguely remembered plans to leave the hospital, but he couldn't remember the actual flight. He saw how everyone was crammed into the car and for the first time, he was rather glad that he was so small. Suddenly, the entire car gave a lurch, jarring his legs and he hissed in pain.

“What was that?” Jack asked, trying to see around the back seat and Sam's head.

“I don't know,” Hammond answered, “Must have been a pothole.”

“I didn't see anything,” Mrs. Hammond added. She looked back to smile gently at Daniel. He gave back a guarded grin, trying to remember what story they had told her that had been convincing enough for her to go along with it all. Something to do with protective custody and national safety, he thought. It had all sounded rather far fetched when he had first heard the story, like an action movie, but at least it was more plausible than the truth.

“What the hell!?” Hammond shouted, slamming on the breaks. Teal'c did his best to shield Daniel's legs but he still hit hard enough to cause him to whimper. Such was the creature outside the car that no one even took note of his pain.

“What is that thing?” Mrs. Hammond cried, instinctively leaning sideways to shield her daughter and the other children in the back. It was an ugly looking creature, part snake and part bird. It hovered in the air and stared at them, coiling and uncoiling its long tail.

Sam was the only one in the car to really move. She dove under the seat and pulled up her alien detector gun. Before anyone could stop her, she leapt out of the car and pointed it towards the thing. When she turned on the gun, rather than the high pitched whine it usually gave when faced with someone out of sync, it gave a tortured moan. The creature turned cold, unblinking eyes towards her, the eyes of a serpent.

“Really, really hate snakes,” Jack muttered and he reached out of the car and dragged Sam back inside just as the thing dove for where she had been. It whipped around to face them but Jack was already slamming the door, shouting, “Step on it!” and they took off. Looking back as they sped down the road, they saw it watching the leave.

“What was that thing?” Mrs. Hammond demanded, alternatively checking on its shrinking view and looking protectively over the back seat.

“It's breaking down,” Sam mumbled, shaking with spent adrenaline in Jack's lap.

“Don't you ever do something like that again, young lady,” Mrs. Hammond added. Once they had put a few miles in between them and the creature, the lieutenant pulled over.

“All right,” he said, twisting about so that he could see Sam and Jack, “I think we deserve an explanation. What's going on?”

“It's the time bubble,” Sam explained, “It's breaking down. There must be too much stress, or maybe it isn't supposed to bring us back this far. I thought we'd have more time before this would happen.”

“Time bubble?” Mrs. Hammond asked at the same time that Jack said, “English, Carter.”

“You know how I said it wouldn't be a good idea to keep riding the time bubble indefinitely,” she answered Jack, “Well, my theory was that to make the bubble possible at all, our section of the universe was tied off from the rest of the universe.

“In a bubble, yeah, we got that part,” Jack agreed, “Go on. Where did that thing come from?”

“From outside the universe!” Daniel exclaimed before she could answer, “The bubble is breaking down and letting the outside in!”

“I do not understand this,” Teal'c remarked, barely beating Jack at it. Sam sighed.

“Think of the universe like a bucket of water,” she said, “And Earth was in the bucket. Then we get out of sync with the water and are in a bubble that his resting on top of the water. All around the bubble, though, is this place that isn't our universe. So when the bubble starts to give, whatever is out there can come in.”

“If a creature were to enter a soap bubble, would not the bubble pop, Samantha Carter?” Teal'c asked.

“It's not a literal soap bubble!” Sam exclaimed, “I just used that to help you understand. Trust me, you'd know if the bubble popped.”

“There are monsters in bubbles?” Theresa asked, her face wrinkled up in confusion. 

“So there are aliens,” Mark added.

“I don't understand any of this,” Mrs. Hammond said, “What time bubble? Is that something to do with the terrorists searching for you?”

“Trust me, lady,” Mark answered, “I gave up long ago figuring out what's going on. They keep changing the story anyway.”

“Look,” Lieutenant Hammond said slowly, “All we really need to know is, are there going to be more of those things, and how dangerous are they?”

“The longer we stay out of sync with time, the more of those things will come,” Sam answered, “And as for dangerous, I have no idea.”

“We do know that one of them tried to kill you,” Jack added, shuddering slightly. He really hated snakes.

“They could be intelligent,” Daniel suggested, sitting up with an earnest expression on his face, “We don't know they wanted to kill. Maybe they were trying to communicate!”

“Sweety, people don't communicate by biting each other,” Mrs. Hammond said kindly. Daniel pouted and leaned back against Teal'c. Hammond slowly started the car up again and took off. It was going to be a very long drive to Colorado.

Chapter 17

The second jolt happened many hours later, just when they were taking a break to eat dinner. They did not intend to stop to sleep; instead they rotated between the Hammonds, Jack, and Teal'c. They kept to back roads, hoping to avoid being seen or recognized when one of the later two were driving. Despite their determination to not stop until Colorado, this was an impossible feat, especially with four children in the car. They tried to at least time the stops with food breaks so that they didn't feel like they were losing too much time.

“What was that?” Mark demanded, his mouth full of peanut butter sandwich.

“The pothole again,” Sam answered, and she ran back to the car for her alien detector gun. The creatures that appeared, however, were far less vicious in appearance than their predecessor. Tiny being swam through the air like on delicate wings, giving off a faint glow like fireflies.

“Ooh, fairies!” Theresa exclaimed delightedly. Sam pointed the gun at them, bringing forth the same tortured sound as before. The fay beings swarmed around her, appearing curious, and her grip tightened. She wondered if a stun gun would work on them. They didn't touch, however, and they continued on, dancing around each of them before flying away into the trees.

“Oh, fairies leaving?” Theresa asked, her bottom lip trembling.

“That was unreal!” Mark exclaimed, finishing his sandwich. After a brief discussion, they decided to stay and finish their dinner before they went on, this time with Daniel in Jack's lap because Teal'c was driving and Sam up front with Hammond. Theresa got her mother's lap and Mark was very happy to be free of her. The third jolt came around midnight. Those who were awake watched anxiously for any new intruders, but nothing made an appearance. Then Daniel woke up and lifted his head with a confused air.

“ _Where are we_?” he asked, his Arabic so slurred by sleep that Jack barely understood him.

“ _We're on our way home, remember_?” Jack whispered in the same language. Daniel fidgeted slightly and then hissed as the pain hit his legs. Turning his head in an attempt to see Jack, he whispered in a worried voice, “ _Are you my new foster family_?” Jack stared down at him, anxiety growing in his chest.

“You don't need a foster family,” he whispered back, deliberately in English, “We're going to where you're big, again. Remember, Daniel?” Daniel bit his lip and Jack tensed, waiting for his answer.

“I thought I dreamed that,” Daniel said at last, frowning. As Daniel drifted back into sleep, Jack was wide awake. What did Daniel mean, he thought he dreamed that? Did he dream they were his foster family? Or did he really forget, even for a moment, that he wasn't really an eight year old little boy? Suddenly, the jolts in time seemed even more ominous. It wasn't until many hours later, with nothing more happening, that he allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

When he awoke again, the sun was shining.

“Nothing has happened since the time you fell asleep, O'Neill,” Teal'c said, this time from the passenger seat while Mrs. Hammond drove. He held a deeply sleeping Theresa in his lap with an ease Jack wouldn't have expected from the soldier. Sometimes, he forgot that Teal'c was a father.

“Creatures of the abyss,” Sam mumbled, still asleep. She was snuggled up against her alien detector gun as though it were a teddy bear.

“We'll stop for breakfast, soon,” Mrs. Hammond told them, sounding much calmer than she had all of yesterday. Jack hoped she wasn't regretting agreeing to take them, especially with Theresa in the car. Jack had suggested leaving the two of them off at a hotel somewhere along the way, but when Sam had informed them that the time breaks could happen anywhere, even if the rest of them were gone, Mrs. Hammond had decided it was better for the entire family to be together.

“No, no!” Daniel screamed suddenly, wakening the rest of the car before Jack could sooth him. It only took a few words this time before Daniel was back with them. A mile after that they came to a rest stop.

“We're over halfway there now,” Hammond declared, looking over the map.

“I'll bet we could go faster if they let me fix your engine,” Sam mumbled to Jack while he got Daniel into his wheel chair.

“So,” Jack said suddenly, “What do you guys miss most from the future? Me, I miss the Simpsons.” The knot in his stomach returned when both children gave him a blank stare. Then the stares cleared a bit, morphing into confusion.

“I miss my motorcycle,” Sam said, and Jack almost relaxed until she asked, “I had a motorcycle didn't I? I remember working on one a lot.”

“Do I like coffee?” Daniel asked, “I don't think I do. But I remember wanting it.” He sounded even more doubtful than Sam.

“Yes,” Jack answered, trying to keep his tone light, “You have a motorcycle and you both live off of coffee.”

“It feels like a dream,” Sam said, still frowning, “I remember it, I know its important to get back there, but it feels like a dream.”

“Are you my foster family in the future too?” Daniel asked. Sam was starting to get as alarmed as Jack as she looked back and forth between them.

“Yeah, Danny, we're your family there too,” Jack answered at last, and he wheeled him towards where Hammond was just getting a small fire started. Sam ran over to Teal'c.

“You remember the future, right?” she demanded, “Not like a dream, but for real?” Teal'c cocked his head to one side, considering her.

“Indeed,” he answered at last, and turned back to unloading the cooler, but as he walked he spoke to her. “Do you find yourself forgetting, Samantha Carter?”

“Maybe a little,” she answered, “I remember, but it doesn't feel real. I think the time rift is affecting us. Daniel the most. I don't know about Jack; he seems to remember ok.”

“I will not let you forget your future,” Teal'c assured her, and she began to feel better. Then the world jolted again, and the fire erupted in a blaze of heat until it towered over them like a demon. It opened its eyes which were black empty pits, like two pieces of coal in a burning furnace. Teal'c dropped the chest.

Chapter 18

The demon roared with all the fury of a blazing inferno and everyone ducked away from it, Sam hiding behind Teal'c. Mark shouted, “Awesome!” and tried to get closer until Mrs. Hammond grabbed him and pulled him behind her. Her husband had Theresa and was backing away slowly, as if the fire were merely a wild animal they had surprised. Jack was edging Daniel away as well, though they were on the wrong side to make a break for the car.

“Bad fire!” Theresa shouted at the creature and it turned to face her. The lieutenant backed away more swiftly. A growl rumbled deep within the fiery throat. Hammond stepped back further and his back hit against a tree.

Suddenly, Teal'c was in motion again. In one fluid motion he grabbed up the cooler, strode forward, and made as though to throw the entire thing against the beast. He held on, however, the lid flying open, and ice, water, and food rained down over the fire. It hissed, sending up great waves of retched black smoke. 

Taking his cue from Teal'c, Jack let go of the wheelchair and stood in front of it, scooping up the earth to pelt over the demon. Mark and Sam ran forward to help, in spite of the adults' protests, and soon the fire demon fizzled and shrank until only the faint glow of embers and an immense cloud of smoke remained. Jack got Daniel back under his control and everyone ran for the car, coughing and gasping for breath.

Everyone wound up in a jumble, this time with Jack sprawled across Sam and Mark with Daniel on top of him. Teal'c was driving and both Hammonds were in the other front seat next to him with Theresa somehow crawled over onto Teal'c's lap. Despite the confusion Teal'c floored it, everyone eager to put as much distance as possible between them and that smoke.

Catching their breath from the excitement proved to be hard. With the exception of Teal'c, the smoke seemed to have caught within their lungs, leaving painful wheezing and harsh coughing in its wake. Slowly, they began to untangle themselves. After some tricky maneuvering, Jack managed to sit properly in a seat with Daniel on his lap and Sam on her brother's. The third backseat was still taken up by the hasty repacking of their supplies, including the now empty, slightly melted chest and Daniel's wheelchair. The Hammonds were stuck in their position but didn't seem to mind too much, considering the way the lieutenant was holding his wife. Theresa seemed thrilled to get to sit in the driver's seat, especially as her cough began to ease. The smoke had hit Jack and Daniel the hardest.

“What...the hell...was that?” Jack gasped between fits of coughing. Daniel wheezed in his lap, his hands clutching fearfully at Jack's arms.

“Not fun,” Mark answered, still coughing a bit himself. Sam held tightly to her alien detector gun, her own breaths raspy.

“Is everyone all right? Mrs. Hammond asked, her tone concerned, “Should we go to a hospital?”

Jack wanted to answer a definite no, that it would be way to risky. He might have answered if he could manage to get in a decent breath. Even more worrying was the way Daniel was gasping in his lap, small hands clutching at him convulsively.

“Did he ever have asthma?” Sam asked, surprisingly docile for being in her brother's lap.

“Just allergies,” Jack managed to gasp out.

“What about you, son, how are you doing back there?” Hammond asked, twisting about to look at them.

“Be ok,” he managed, before another coughing fit bowled him over.

“Is little Danny hurt?” Theresa demanded from Teal'c's lap and she twisted around to see, her knee prodding against his pouch and nearly sending them all off the road.

“K, Resa,” Daniel rasped, speaking for the first time since the fire creature had appeared. The others looked at him doubtfully. Sam squirmed about on her brother's lap to get a closer look.

“Don't look good,” she said, frowning, “Not Jack, neither.” They were both pale and wheezing, but at least their coughing was finally subsiding. 

“That a technical term?” Jack asked. Sam stuck her tongue out.

“Water?” Daniel requested. Unfortunately, most of their water had been used to bathe the fire demon, and the rest was packed securely away at the bottom of everything. Luckily, it wasn't long before they came to a small rest area. Feeling far enough away to chance it, Teal'c stopped the car and everyone got out again. 

“Man, sodas are cheap in '74,” Jack rasped gleefully, but Mrs. Hammond insisted they buy water or juice instead. Half an hour later, Sam looked over Jack and Daniel again and proclaimed that they looked much better. Though their voices were still raspy, the sound of their breathing was much improved.

“Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked,” she decided.

“Or maybe, weird monster smoke is different from regular smoke!” Mark exclaimed, “Maybe they'll start to turn into weird mutants now!” Jack shuddered at the thought.

“If they do, so would we,” Sam pointed out, “We all breathed some of it in!” Mark just shrugged and looked secretly hopeful. Then everyone was piling back into the car, this time with some semblance of order. Mrs. Hammond took her turn to drive and Teal'c once more had Daniel in his lap while Lieutenant Hammond took Sam. Jack, for once, had his lap free because they thought it would be easier for him to breathe and so Mark was once more stuck with Theresa. Luckily for him, she was too tired out herself to keep squirming for a better look at Daniel.

“How much farther to Colorado?” Sam demanded from her perch in the front seat. She no longer had her alien detector gun and Hammond had confiscated it once he realized it had an actual, working taser attached.

“By this time tomorrow, you should be home,” Mrs. Hammond answered. Sam considered this, her memories at war. Home was snuggled up against her mother, fighting with Mark and waiting for her father to come home and help her on her latest technical project. Home was also science labs and motorcycle parts and team nights with pizza and beer. She lived off of coffee and she hated the taste. Her mother was alive and she was dead. Where was home, really?

“If you let me fix your engine, we'd go faster,” she mumbled, sticking to what was certain.

“It will be home always?” Daniel rasped, half asleep himself on Teal'c's lap, “I'll have a family forever?”

“Forever, Daniel Jackson,” Teal'c answered, his voice deep and strong and safe. Daniel allowed himself to fall asleep. The car hurled onwards in subdued silence.

Chapter 19

“Welcome to Colorado,” Hammond whispered, not wanting to wake anyone who was sleeping. They had finally passed the border. By now, the trip had taken on a surreal, dreamlike quality. Though no more monsters attacked them, the car passed many signs of the tearing time bubble. There would be patches of weirdness by the side of the road that really didn't seem to belong on Earth. They might see a tree with strange gourds hanging off it like fruit, or hear a howl that most definitely wasn't a wolf. Once he very nearly hit a thing in the middle of the road. It had antlers and fur but it was not a deer, and it bared its teeth at them as it bounded out of the way. It was high time for the time bubble to be set right.

“I always liked mountains,” Jack murmured, only half awake, “And hockey.”

“Cold,” Daniel whispered from his lap. No one else stirred, except for Mrs. Hammond who managed to pull out a blanket from under her seat and drape it over Daniel. The car ride went on for another hour in silence. Then everybody began to wake up and realize that their destination was fast approaching.

“So now what?” Mark asked, “Are we going to a space ship?”

“A wormhole,” Sam answered gleefully, “Beneath a mountain.”

“It won't be easy to sneak all of us in,” Jack said, frowning, “It's a top security facility.” Daniel tugged at Jack's sleeve.

“I can't swim,” he whispered to him, his eyes wide and serious. Jack looked down at him in confusion.

“You don't have to swim,” he assured him. Sam frowned, her face taking on a look of deep concentration.

“Is there water in the wormhole?” she asked, “I remember walking into water.” Daniel nodded in agreement, his expression earnest and worried. Jack looked back and forth between the two of them and then at Teal'c.

“It isn't real water,” he said at last, at a loss to explain it better. Sam was always the one who explained how wormholes worked. And though he was quite certain it wasn't water, and they didn't swim to different planets, his own memory felt vague. Like walking through wormholes was something he had seen on a television show. He remembered everything but it was like it had happened to someone else. He hoped he wasn't going to start losing his memory like the other two.

“How will we get to the stargate?” Teal'c asked, bringing them back on topic.

“My dad could get us there,” Mark said, proudly, “He can get anywhere.”

“Is this not the same man who has accused me of kidnapping you?” Teal'c asked. 

“Well yeah,” Mark answered, “I'm just saying if he was here, he could do it.”

“We don't need Dad,” Sam insisted, “We have Jack. And Lieutenant Hammond. They are super good at sneaking into places. I have an idea, we make an explosion, and when everyone goes to see what it is we sneak in!”

“We could make the rocks fall!” Theresa piped in enthusiastically, despite the fact she had no idea what they were talking about. She just remembered learning that loud noises in the mountains made rocks fall.

“No!” Daniel screamed, “No falling rock!”

“Ah, but that would be cool,” Mark said, oblivious to Daniel's sudden terror, “We could crush the bad guys!”

“No!” Daniel cried again, starting to sound hysterical. It took Jack ten minutes of Arabic to convince him they weren't going to cause an avalanche or crush anybody, and ten minutes after that for him to stop trembling in Jack's lap. It didn't help that he had banged his broken legs in his distress and they were now throbbing painfully. Then Sam suggested they wait for a demon to appear and distract everyone so they could sneak in. Mrs. Hammond even made the suggestion of pretending to be a tour group.

“Like in that one movie with the AI and tic-tac-toe, except the boy was sneaking out, not in!” Jack said. That earned him a lot of blank looks and one raised eyebrow. By the time they made it to five miles from Cheyenne mountain, they still hadn't come up with a concrete plan. Teal'c had already sneaked through the facility once, but he acknowledged that it might be harder to get in than out. Not to mention there were quite a few more people now than then, most of them children with no tactical training, or at least none that they now remembered.

“I think the Hammonds should leave us once we get there, and take Mark back to his parents,” Jack said.

“I'm not leaving without Sam!” Mark answered furiously. The Hammonds seemed hesitant to leave them but equally unhappy to go with them. At the very least it was agreed that Mrs. Hammond and Theresa shouldn't be a part of it. Everyone also agreed that Mark shouldn't go except for Mark himself.

“I don't really understand this,” Mrs. Hammond said, looking with motherly concern towards the children. Though they had told her again and again that they were from the future and they had to go back, they still looked too young to be sneaking into a government facility, particularly one like NORAD. She had visions of trigger happy guards not realizing their youth until it was too late.

“We pretend to be terrorists or something!” Mark exclaimed when he heard her reservations, “No really, see, everyone thinks you kidnapped all of us, so pretend you did and we're your hostages!”

“Soldiers don't like to negotiate,” Daniel said, his face a mask of perfect innocence. Jack stared down at him. The comment was so much like the adult Daniel that he wasn't sure what to make of it; was that something he had learned as a child or was Daniel actually teasing him? Daniel glanced towards him, trying to hide a giggle and not quite succeeding.

One plan they finally agreed upon was for them to drive past the facility, trying to get a good view of the security, and then to keep on going. Jack still had hopes that they could get to one of the more obscure entrances and find it unguarded. They came to the familiar entrance, got a good look at the fences and guards, and were about to drive on. Which was right when the sudden popping noise and the equally sudden appearance of what could only be described as a dragon managed to unravel every half-formed plan they had. 

Hammond, who was still driving at this point, had to slam on the breaks when the creature broke into the air right in front of them. It screamed at the car and launched itself forward, long claws crunching into metal and the car jolted to a halt and skidded backwards. Everyone screamed as they felt the car rise into the air and then fall, rolling, and finally coming to a halt on its side. Above them, the dragon roared. Then came the sound of gunfire.

Chapter 20

Jack groaned in pain. Then he heard the hard body on top of him whimper and his eyes flew open in alarm. Outside he could still hear shouting and gunfire and the harsh screams of that creature. Jack's head cleared a bit more and he found himself crunched up against a passenger door with a pile of bodies lying against of him. The pile was wiggling and shifting as the various children and one adult took stock of themselves. The car had rolled onto its side, Jack remembered, which explained why he was jammed up against a door despite the fact that the car had continued its roll and left half its occupants on the ceiling. 

The other half had been wearing their seatbelts. Which explained why Jack wasn't completely squashed, even if it felt like it, since only Daniel and Sam were resting their full weight on top of him. Teal'c and Mark were only leaning in his direction. In the front seat, Mrs. Hammond had even managed to keep her hold on Theresa, despite the rolling, and the kid was now giggling to herself like this was a ride. Daniel whimpered again and then Sam was squirming in a desperate attempt to get off of him, terrified that she had hurt him worse than he already was. 

Suddenly, the doors on the other side of the car were thrown open and military personal were looking in at them.

“Is everyone all right in here?” a man asked, his tone concerned despite his professional stance.

“Ow,” Mark answered, finding it decidedly uncomfortable to hang upside down by a belt. He also had a strong notion that he had dropped something important, something he wasn't ever supposed to let fall, and it wasn't a pleasant feeling.

“I am not injured,” Teal'c answered the man, prompting Mark to answer properly with, “I think I'm all right!” In the front the Hammonds were already being helped out of the car. Theresa didn't seem to want to go; she had finally stopped giggling when she saw the giant monster outside.

While the soldier helped Teal'c out of his seat and right side up, Jack's door was being opened. Luckily, the people opening it seemed to have enough sense to do it carefully and to ease Jack down when he was found to be leaning against it. Jack, too, had been wearing his seatbelt. He even had put it around Daniel in his lap, but it turned out that the belt didn't work very well over two people because somehow they had slid out of it. They got Sam out first, who despite an obvious bump on her head was very insistent that it was Daniel they needed to help.

“I'm all right,” Jack also insisted. 

“There isn't time for the stretchers,” he heard one of them say, and then an entire tree came crashing towards them, torn up from the beast and thrown. To Jack he only said, “We need to get you all inside to safety.” One of the men was already carrying Sam away at a run while the others helped Mark out. All together it couldn't have been more than two minutes since the crash that the military had them all hurrying away from the epic battle and into the very building they had spent days trying to plan how to infiltrate. Jack wished they could have managed it without Daniel getting hurt again.

Of course they weren't taken down to the stargate. They were taken to an infirmary to be checked over, but at least they were inside. Even better, Daniel turned out to only be slightly bruised as Sam had missed falling on his legs and had, in fact, managed to shield him somewhat in the roll. Mark felt horrible when he realized he had let go of her during the crash, even though everyone from the nurses on duty to the Hammonds to Sam herself assured him there was no way he could have held on. Then of course came the questions. 

No one suspected them of their intentions, of course. They were a group of mostly children, the youngest no older than four and the second youngest in need of a wheelchair to get around, and so obviously a family on an outing that no one questioned that. And even if they had, who would think that they could orchestrate a giant monster appearing from no where and attacking them? But it was a military facility and they really wanted to know who they had just rescued. Thankfully even with Teal'c no one seemed to recognize Sam and Mark or Jack as the kidnapped children.

The Hammonds had to admit to their real identity. It was safe enough for the moment considering he was supposed to be on vacation at the moment. Mark and Sam promptly forgot their aliases and as they had already referred to each other as 'Mark' and 'Sam' during the confusion of the rescue, all that was left was to make up a fake last name. That was, of course, when their minds went blank.

“I'm Jack Simpson,” Jack said to cover for them, “And this is my brother Danny. They're Mark and Sam...Flanders. And the big guy Murray Chulak.”

“He's here to help watch the kids,” Hammond said before they got too many weird stares for their odd group, “An old family friend.”

“Indeed,” Teal'c said when he still received dubious stares.

“What was that thing?” Mark demanded, unintentionally managing to distract the soldiers.

“It was a monster!” Theresa insisted from the safety of her mother's arms. More paper work was filled out and then they were left more or less to themselves. When more wounded were being brought in, they were moved to another room so that the children wouldn't be subjected to such a gruesome sight. 

“We have to get there soon,” Sam whispered, once they were alone, “Before more things get through, or it all unravels completely and we're stuck here.” There was no need to elaborate what she meant by 'there'.

“We can distract them while you four go,” Mrs. Hammond said. She pulled Theresa into her lap and away from Daniel who was lying on the bed beside her. Daniel was awake, though just barely. He had been given some more pain medicine and was now humming softly to himself and apparently oblivious to the rest of the world.

“We can take one of the shafts down to the right level,” Jack said, “But it's a long way down. Maybe we can rig some kind of harness to carry Daniel.”

“I can do that!” Sam said, then she frowned. She had just realized that she had lost her alien detector gun. And she hadn't gotten to tazer anyone with it.

“I'll do that, in the bathroom,” Jack insisted, “You all keep watch and make sure no one notices what we're doing.” Normally, he'd be more cautious in their talk, wary of surveillance. But between the very large distraction outside, and the fact that no one expected anything of them, he figured that even if their conversation or actions were recorded by the time anyone actually viewed them they would be long gone or already caught anyway.

“I hope the bad monster doesn't eat anyone,” Theresa murmured, and then, “Is Danny all right?”

“He's fine, sweetheart,” her mother assured her, “He's just sleepy.”

An hour later, the excitement caused by the other dimensional threat had toned down enough that someone remembered their small band of refugees. They were brought sandwiches and iced tea. They were told that the threat was under control for now but that they would be staying there for a while longer. Then they were left alone again. They ate the sandwiches and then Jack brought out the harness. They were ready to make their way down to the stargate.

“If anyone asks where we are, say we're playing hide and seek or something,” Jack said as he helped attach the harness to Teal'c. To Mark he said, “This is a very important job I need for you to do. If anyone comes in, I want you and Theresa to talk like you're playing a game with us.” Given this very important task, Mark seemed less inclined to complain that he wanted to go with his sister. He gave Jack a salute. Mrs. Hammond, looking suddenly teary eyed, wished them all good luck and gave them all a hug, even a very startled Teal'c. Theresa gave Daniel one final pat and then Jack pulled open the access panel. It was meant to be an emergency exit and now it was going to be their ticket home. Jack started down first and then Sam and last came Teal'c and Daniel. 

“See you in the future,” Jack whispered up towards them and then the panel was closed, leaving them in darkness except for a faint green glow every few meters. They began their descent.

Chapter 21

It was a long way down. Intellectually, Jack knew that. Knowing that it takes a while for the elevator to carry him down, however, and actually climbing the distance down a ladder is not quite the same thing.

“How will we know when we have reached the correct level?” Teal'c asked, looking down towards the other two.

“The panels are numbered,” Jack answered, and then saved his breath for climbing. Sam, a short ways above him, was beginning to discover yet another aspect of being ten that she didn't like. Her arms and legs were much shorter and her strength lessened by a great deal. After the first fifteen minutes of climbing down her arms were already beginning to feel the strain.

“Can't we just slide down the ladder?” she demanded breathlessly. When they had suggested that she, like Daniel, was harnessed to someone's back she had vehemently insisted she could climb. She now regretted that hasty decision. The blow to her pride would be much easier to take than the aches in her arms and legs.

“Too risky,” Jack answered, and that was the end of conversation. They climbed onwards and down, occasionally pausing to rest, until the silence was broken by a soft humming. The tune was unfamiliar to the three climbers, as were the softly mumbled words the hum transformed into. It didn't help that only Jack knew Arabic, the language of the song. Daniel had woken up.

Later, Sam would swear that they climbed eight hours straight, and that Daniel either sang softly or hummed for the majority of the climb. Jack and Teal'c insisted it wasn't nearly that long of a climb and that they had to break often for Sam to rest. Daniel didn't really remember the climb at all but he still insisted that he had not been singing and even if he did it wasn't for the entire climb. However long it finally took, Jack finally reached the access panel to the proper level. There was absolutely no way to tell what lay on the other side. He listened carefully and finally opened the panel a crack and peaked out. It opened onto a room very similar to the one they had left behind. In fact, the access panel was even hidden in the exact same spot of the room. The room was empty and so Jack climbed out, followed by Sam who immediately flopped down on the bed and then by Teal'c and Daniel. 

“Do you think they have noted our absence?” Teal'c asked, his voice low.

“If they have they're being very quiet about it,” Jack answered, “Either they're too busy up above with weird bubble monsters, or they didn't figure out how we got out or where we were going.” Then they all felt the familiar jolt they had come to associate with the time rift. It was much stronger here underground, like a sudden static shock. Sam sat up on the bed.

“I'll bet it gets worse the closer we get to the stargate,” she said, “Since that's where the bubble came from.”

“Terrific,” Jack mumbled, and then, “Well, let's move out.”

“Carry me,” Sam demanded, holding out her arms from the bed. Jack rolled his eyes and started for the door, Teal'c following behind him. Grumbling to herself, Sam finally slid off the bed and walked leadenly after them.

No one was about in the hallways either. It was eerie. Teal'c had told them about how no one was around the first time he came through either, and they were beginning to wonder if something else was going on besides the lateness of the hour. Then they heard swift clomp of approaching feet and had to duck into a storage closet. Jack felt oddly relieved that they weren't alone. Then the footsteps faded quickly into the distance and they left the closet to continue on. Just as Teal'c had described, there was no difficulty getting to the stargate. There were no people. There were creatures.

They were short and green skinned with finned ears and red eyes and teeth like a shark. They looked like they would have been at home in the middle of the ocean but they were creatures of the air, swimming through it like water.

“Now I really need my alien gun,” Sam whispered as they all three stared in horror at the creatures. Daniel, on Teal'c's back and half asleep, was in no position to see them. He started to scream anyway. Jack and Sam turned swiftly, first to look at Daniel, and then to see back the way they came. There was a humongous snake. Caught between the peacefully swimming shark people and a actively charging serpent, Jack, Sam, and Teal'c ran into the gate room and slammed the door shut behind them. Once the door was secure, the three of them turned slowly to face the creatures in the room. They were now swimming towards them, red eyes staring unblinking. Jack stared at them nervously, finally spreading his arms and saying, “We come in peace?”

The closest creature wiggled its ears, gnashing its teeth. Jack moved in front of the others protectively, ready to tackle it with his bare hands if he had to. 

_Peace_? As clear as though it were spoken, they heard the word in their heads. Daniel began to squirm on Teal'c's back, wanting to see the creatures.

“Yeah,” Jack answered slowly, not entirely convinced he heard what he thought he had heard, “You understand us?” The creature did the ear wiggle again as it considered them. Up close, all those teeth were very intimidating and the red eyed stare didn't help. Yet still, they hadn't attacked yet.

_Understand_ , they heard, again in their heads, _Not understand. Why_?

“You understand and you don't understand?” Jack asked, confused, “What are you asking?”

“Let me down!” Daniel exclaimed, “I can talk to them!” Teal'c hesitated. “They don't speak English,” Daniel said, “It's my job. Isn't it? I think I remember that. And I think I know what they mean.”

“I get it a bit,” Sam said, her voice anything but confident, “I think they're confused about the time bubble.”

“They don't know how they got here,” Daniel insisted, “I can talk to them!” Finally, when the creatures still didn't attack, Jack nodded towards Teal'c. Teal'c cautiously undid the harness, sliding it around until he could hold Daniel over his chest rather than his back. He couldn't very well set him on the ground, after all.

“Hello,” Daniel said, once he was finally able to face the creatures properly, “I know you're confused. We want to help.” The creatures came closer. There were five of them in all, one of them smaller than the others. The smallest creature darted forward, only to be stopped by one of the larger ones. It gave off a loud emotion without words, something like excitement and interest. Jack moved himself to make sure he was between the creatures and Daniel.

_Help_? the creature asked, _Home_?

“We need to go through the...the ring with water,” Daniel answered, “It takes us to another planet.”

_Machine, door_ , the voice said, and Daniel smiled, apparently delighted.

“We need to fix time,” Daniel continued explaining, “On the planet is a machine to fix time.”

_Fix, good_ , the voice agreed. How Daniel was understanding this, Jack didn't know, unless the voice was somehow telling him more. If he concentrated, he got images with the words, or emotions, but it was like a puzzle. The message was all in different pieces and to understand it they had to be fit together until it was more than just the words. Apparently Daniel, even pint sized Daniel, was good at puzzles.

_Show_ , the voice said, and all six creatures moved away, the smallest one reluctantly, to give them access to the gate.

“Come on,” Daniel said, “They want us to dial it!” Even Jack, slow though he could be at communication, was able to understand that. He was still wary of an attack, but there wasn't really any choice but to do what they had come here to do. As though sensing his unease, all of the creatures stayed well back.

The gate had to be turned by hand. Jack was still trying to figure out the best way to do that when a creature approached again.

_Turn_? it asked.

“I'll show you!” Daniel exclaimed, and then he squinched up his eyes as though he were concentrating really hard. Jack wished he had a camera. Before the others could even begin to wonder what was going on, the creatures swam up to the gate and started to turn it. Being able to swim in the air gave many advantages.

“Is it hooked up to a power source?” Jack asked. 

“I already checked that,” Sam said, “It should work. It looks like they've been doing experiments since we left.” With hardly any trouble at all, the creatures began to dial the planet.

“Don't...hover...in front of it!” Jack called, when some of the shark creatures got too curious while the others dialed. Remembering how he had gotten images from them, Jack tried to project the image of what was about to happen, and what would happen if anyone was standing in front of the ring. His projection must have worked because the creatures backed up quickly, and the dialers paused for a moment. After shifting their bodies to make sure they were not in front of the ring, they continued to dial. 

The gate room was shaking. The energy hummed. At last, the last chevron was locked and the gate was opened. Together, SG 1 and the creatures of the rift approached the blue surface.

“Are you sure I won't need to swim?” Daniel whispered softly, tugging gently on Teal'c's shirt.

“You will not,” Teal'c answered, “I will hold you.” Together, they stepped through.  
Chapter 22

Daniel clung to Teal'c gasping and freezing when they arrived. Sam clung to Jack, almost knocking him over, before she threw up. SG1 might have gone through the gate a million times before, but these bodies had not. The creatures swam through with ease. If they were affected at all, they didn't project it.

“Are you alright, Daniel Jackson?” Teal'c asked, noting how he was shivering.

“Fine,” Daniel answered, but he still clutched at Teal'c with a vise-like grip. Then together, they approached the machine. There was a youth already there. He was sitting in front of the time machine, hunched over and desperate. He looked up as they approached and his eyes widened in fear. Then he blinked.

“You are Teal'c?” he asked, and then looking at the other three his eyes widened further until he said, “Daniel?” Daniel stared back at him, frowning.

“Why did you do it?” he asked at last. Only with Daniel's words did the others recognize the man.

“Malikai?” Jack asked, his eyes narrowing.

“I didn't mean to!” the man cried, “Not this! I just wanted to see her again, alive!”

_Man, bad_? one of the creatures asked, and half the group jumped. Somehow, in the surprise of finding Malikai, they had half forgotten the shark people swimming alongside them.

“Not bad, just...wrong,” Daniel answered, ignoring Jack's snort. This youth was responsible for everything they had gone through. He could very well be responsible for unraveling existence. And still Daniel seemed ready to forgive him.

_Fix_? the creature asked, and Malikai bowed his head.

“I can't fix it,” he whispered, “I tried.”

_Try_? it asked. 

“I can't!” Malikai exclaimed, but Daniel shook his head.

“They want to try it,” he explained, “I think...” he turned towards Sam, “I don't understand this, what do you get?” She had her eyes squeezed shut again.

“Circles within circles,” she answered, “I see...I think it's the bubble. I think they understand it.”

“Go for it,” Jack said to the creatures, nodding towards the pedestal. He didn't get visions of circles himself. And yet, for an instant, he got an image of a ship. The ship had people inside, but they couldn't live outside the ship because it was in outer space. They had to go home before the air ran out. It was more of an idea than an image. Then it was gone. 

Deftly, the creatures pushed buttons. Nothing happened.

“Hey,” Jack said suddenly, “What exactly is going to happen if this works?”

“The bubble flips back and we go back to our real time,” Sam answered.

“So what happens to us, exactly?” Jack asked, “Do we go back into our future bodies?”

“I think...well we're in the eye of the storm, so to speak...but still, last time...” Then there was a sudden, bright flash. The stargate started to dial on its own, just as it had before. Malikai looked up from his despair.

“You got the machine to work?” he asked, “Where do you get the power?” One of the creatures stared at him.

_Power, air_ , it answered and then went back to work. It pressed a final button and then, just as the stargate burst into life, they felt a jolt like a really strong static shock, and with a pop the creatures vanished. The sky came alive with light and everyone fell to the ground. 

When they arose again, something was different. Their clothes had changed. Gear appeared nearby. Sam suddenly had blond hair again. Daniel whimpered in pain. 

And some things remained very much the same. Sam and Daniel were still children. Jack, while he would balk at being called a child, was still not old enough to drink.

“It's all right,” Sam insisted, “I think we have to go through the stargate, and once we're away from the source we will change into our proper selves. Jack eyed her dubiously until Daniel whimpered again. He was sitting on the ground next to Jack, wearing clothes that were way too big for him.

“I think I lost the casts,” he managed to gasp out. Jack cringed.

“Okay,” he said, “Let's get Daniel's legs immobilized and then go home.” Luckily, with all their gear they were able to rig something up pretty quickly. This time, Teal'c and Jack carried him between them. The only difficult was when Sam pointed out they couldn't actually tie anything to his legs, because if he did suddenly grow big it would hurt him. They settled for creating a sort of stretcher to hold him as immoble as possible. Jack gave no promises to not drop him once he grew big. Daniel looked troubled. Teal'c gave Jack a look. 

“What do we do about Malikai?” Teal'c asked as they slowly carried Daniel towards the stargate. 

“Worry about him when we're away from here,” Jack answered. Malikai followed them nervously. At the gate, Sam dialed. Then she sent through the GDO code and waited. Teal'c remembered doing that very thing and everyone held their breath, waiting. Unlike when Teal'c sent it, they were quick to get a reply. The iris was opened. SG1 stepped through.

On the other side of the gate, completely clueless to how close their world came to unraveling, a very bald general Hammond awaited SG1's arrival. He was not expecting what he got.

“Teal'c” he said into the speaker, “Where is the rest of SG1? Where did these children come from?”

“For crying out loud!” the teenage boy exclaimed, “Sam!”

The End


End file.
